4 3 2 1

The first third of the book can maybe be given a 6 or 7, but the rest would have to be a 2. That produces a weighted average of 3. I went into this book excited because the implied premise is that the circumstances of a person's life change them. Well, this book failed to show that; the various Archies are not terribly different, and not much happens, and the book never even goes past Archie's early 20s! And if the premise isn't true, why even write the book? Answer: the author loves writing about himself. I asked another woman who read it if she thought a woman could get such a monumentally self-indulgent book like this published - we both doubted it. So if you're truly curious about the book, go ahead and start it, but when you begin cringing at seeing it lying about the house, put it away and read a synopsis instead. And by the way (here comes the spoiler), I'm sure the author suspected or was told how boring the readers would find it, so he resorted to a cheap trick - he kills off one of the Archies fairly early via an accident. I noticed this made me suspect that he might do it the same way again, and so the tension in an otherwise boring book was ratcheted up: Archie is going skiing? Is he going to break his neck? Etc.

It is something of the measure of Auster's talent that he manages to spin out the fairly mundane lives of his four Archie Fergusons into a mostly engaging and satisfying 800 odd pages. It is not without its longueurs, at about half way I was wondering if I'd make it through to the end but things pick up again. At times it felt every bit like the big book it is but not too often. The Fergusons are good companions in all their versions, bookish, a bit pompous and self-obsessed but likeable. Nothing very much happens, each Ferguson undergoes the kinds of small triumphs and disasters that beset most of our lives but none the worse for that.