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A Moon Palace for the Misbegotten Oct 22, 2000 (43 of 46 found this helpful)
Typical Auster: strong line writing, well-defined characters, coincidence-heavy plot, a nonexistent ending. The latter two separates Auster from the pool of countless other "literary" authors. Nobody else has Auster's uncanny ability to evoke the desperation of loneliness.
This is a strange novel, but if you've read Auster before, it's going to feel as familiar as that pillow you sleep under every night. There's this guy named M.S. Fogg, he's an orphan, and all sorts of crazy things happen to him, some by his doing, some by coincidence. The density of Auster's plot is staggering; the entire story of Effing, a character Fogg meets, could easily have been another book. That whole section almost reads like a Reader's Digest version of a bigger book, but I didn't mind at all. I don't mind efficiency when it's done right.
Don't expect much from the ending. It just is. If you expect a nice tidy package at the end, you're gonna be disappointed. Just take it for what it is.
This is my third Auster, already having read "In the Country of Last Things" and "The New York Trilogy." I love them all. I'm also a fan of Haruki Murakami, and I highly recommend you check out his books if you like Auster. They have striking similarities: both tend to utilize an unsure unwilling first person voices (faux noir, almost), work with weird plots, have coincidences aplenty, and have nonstandard endings.
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Complex and entertaining Apr 5, 2001 (13 of 15 found this helpful)
This is one of Auster's strongest works. Moon Palace is difficult to summarize, and it would almost be easier to use a Venn diagram or a chronogram to describe the plot than to try to put it in words. Roughly speaking, the novel covers the curious life of M.S.Fogg, from his youth as an orphan to his strange days as a Columbia University graduate to his experience as caretaker of the eccentric Thomas Effing.
But the novel is actually a series of stories and antecedents, all woven together through a tangled web of improbable coincidences and interactions. Many of the sections are virtually self contained. The tale of Fogg's inward retreat as an undergraduate culminating in his descent into homelessness in itself could be a well formed short story or novella. Likewise Effing's bizarre tale of adventure in the wilderness of Utah is story in itself. The links between these sections are a haphazard series of coincidences and connections, some which are seemingly intentionally suspect.
Perhaps one of the most interesting stories-within-a-story literally *is* a story - Fogg's summary of a book written by Effing's long lost son, who in my opinion is one of the most interesting characters in the book.
Auster's eye for detail and appreciation for the absurd is in top form in Moon Palace. More than one passage made me laugh out loud. This isn't conventional humor, Auster amuses through his sheer audaciousness - he is an author that takes risks and the reader appreciates this.
The characters are an interesting mix. I found Effing to be fascinating, and his unpredictability largely mirrors the unpredictability of the novel itself, but he ultimately reads much like a caricature. The protagonist Fogg is complex and introspective, and it is a great success that Auster manages to allow the reader to connect with such a character.
You'll find all of the characteristic Auster trademarks in Moon Palace: elements of mystery that border on pulp, unlikely characters bound by a web of coincidences, a study of connectivity vs. isolation, and all wound in Auster's amazing ability to depict the emotions and energy of New York City. Highly recommended.
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What A Wonderful Story, Beautifully Told Oct 21, 1997 (10 of 11 found this helpful)
In search of a good mystery I went to the Edgar Awards to find an author with whom I was unfamiliar. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster was unavailable, so I picked up Moon Palace instead.
I finished the book in one sitting. It seems to be more than a novel or stories strung together to tell a tale, but rather a grouping of real and beautiful pictures orchestrated with words. There is a sense of loss at its end, as if people you have known are now, once more beyond reach. It is one of those books that you wish you had only just begun, or that it was three times longer in length.
I'll go back to the book and read it again and I will read the rest of Auster's work.
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A Minor Disappointment, but a decent read nonetheless Oct 31, 2006 (3 of 3 found this helpful)
This book was problematic for me. I understand that Auster experiments with structure and narrative, me being a big fan of his previous work, but this novel had something missing. As other reviewers have written, describing the plot is difficult as there are so many twists and turns, but to put this alongside Murakami, Foster Wallace, and even Auster's past work is a mistake.
The novel starts off simply enough - we're introduced to M.S. Fogg, an orphan who goes to Columbia and finds himself learning about what it means to live in poverty. The book reminded me of Knut Hamsen's work, especially in the descriptions of hunger, but again, there was a disconnect that pervaded even this, the most solid part of the novel so that I could never feel fully integrated with the text. The novel digresses too often into different characters telling stories. If done well, hearing what took place to characters in a summary of sorts can be interesting, but in this instance, the stories within the novel were not interesting enough to warrant much attention. Even the emotional center of the novel, M.S. Fogg's relatonships with Effing, Kitty, and Barber are not strong enough to make you care what happens to Fogg. The most interesting character is Effing, but he is present for only one third of the novel.
What saves the book is Auster's ability to provide interesting details, ones that impressed me so much that I had to reread certain passages. It's the kind of book that someone who wants to write should read so that he or she can learn about how to provide a beautiful tapestry without making it seem forced or the most integral part of the story. My favorite is a description of Fogg furnishing his apartment and making furniture out of boxes of books his uncle left him.
Overall, a decent read and useful to writers. If you are looking for something to entertain you, look somewhere else.
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An added bonus Jan 16, 2002 (2 of 2 found this helpful)
I read this book during my honeymoon. I enjoyed it so much, that it made my wife complain because I didn't spend enough time with her. Trust me, I have read pretty much everything Auster has written, and I found this to be his most interesting and captivating work.