August Brill, the protagonist of Paul Aster's most recent novel "Man in the Dark," can't sleep. A literary critic in his twilight, August fills his hours in darkness without the aid of sheep. Instead, he tells himself stories.
"Man in the Dark" is a short book. Yet, in less than 200 words, the reader is guided toward the discovery of a number of realities. The is, was, and might be, are all present and ask to be examined from multiple perspectives.
The tale August tells himself while lying in bed flirts with the sci-fi genre. Its protagonist, Owen Brick, wakes up in a parallel world in the bottom of a hole. When he emerges, he finds himself in an America where 9/11 did not occur, but where the country is instead at war with herself. Owen's mission, the reason for his removal from the world he knows, is to assassinate the creator of the story. This, the rebels believe, will bring the world to an end. As August is himself the creator of the story, there is some question of whether or not these worlds will collide. Auster kindly steers the reader in a different direction.
Launched into an alternative America, the reader is faced with a number of changes. The unreality proves surprisingly more disturbing than our post-9/11 America. Auster does not delve into the wider implications explicitly, but in August's company, the reader's mind cannot help but churn with hypothetical considerations.
August, we discover, has more than fantastical horrors to grapple with. He is recovering in the home of his only daughter after a bad car accident. August resides in the shadow of his wife's recent death, a fog that led to drinking, and, subsequently, the crash.
August's granddaughter, Katya, joins him in his convalescence. Her boyfriend, Titus, has been murdered and Auster spends much of the book avoiding the specifics. What is initially important is the presence of their mutual debilitation.
Grandfather and granddaughter escape from their pain during the day by watching film after film. Katya was a graduate student before Titus's death and August hopes that the litany of movies running across the screen is an indication of her progress back to the world she knows.
The scenes that play out between August and Katya are Auster's most successful in this novel. The characters unravel small moments of the films that they use as balm for their wounds. The solace they find in their discussions of the movies frame just one of the mediums through which the characters connect, but the pivotal moments for me were when they joined each other in the dark.
What begins as a fantastic anecdote of parallel worlds concludes as a love story. Discovering that her grandfather is also awake, Katya joins him in his gloom. In the company of his granddaughter August is able to address all that he evades in his sleepless hours.
She asks him about her grandmother and what unfolds is a simply told but poignant story of love. August admits to detours and the disappointments of a lifetime but what lingers is a glimmer of contentment.
August's story allows Katya to tell hers. The gap in their ages lends a different mode of communication than that of a parent and a child. I can hardly imagine climbing into bed with my grandfather for an intimate tête-à-tête, but I love the possibility of such an encounter, and here, I believed it.
At the conclusion of the novel I wasn't particularly attached to any of the characters. But Auster leaves us with possibilities. Things change, and this suggestion of transformation provides the small remnant of hope that the novel needs to sparkle.