Man in the Dark by Paul Auster #104

Okay truth time, this book has been in my stack for quite some time.  At some point something must have drawn me to it, but I'm not sure what.  The cover was a total turn off for me so I just kept going around it so to speak.  I picked it for #104 because it was a shorter book and on a time crunch to get to #105 I needed the help.

So why did the cover turn me off?  I think it looked to much like a mystery or spy book which I am not a big fan of.  Once I started reading though it wasn't.  It was a great surprise to me, which I think made me like it even more.

This book is about an retired book critic, August Brill who was in an accident and lives with his divorced daughter, and his granddaughter who moved back after the death of her boyfriend.

He suffers from insomnia and during the night he works on a story to avoid thinking about his past.  He is a man with a lot of pain and sorrow as are the members of his family.  During the day he spends time with his granddaughter watching old movies.

It was kind of weird at first his story within the book and normally I don't like that.  I was very much turned off on The Novelist by Angela Hunt for this very reason.  It worked with this book.  I was absorbed into both stories and found myself both rooting for and against his fictional character who wakes up and finds himself in an alternate world.

I am so glad I read this book.  It was great and I would recommend it to anyone.