#cottagereading

A story told by a someone who is not a storyteller. The effect is like footprints in the snow: wandering, winding, crossing over each other, looping back and then forward, getting ahead of himself, going over certain kinds of ground too often, but eventually, fitfully, pushing on. And the reason he needs to tell this story? To get there first. To tell a story of solipsism and casual cruelty before his nemesis can tell hers. At least he's Irish, and makes some colourful turns of phrase. #diaryofanoxygenthief #anonymous #cottagereading #murraycorner

Strange to have read this so soon after True Crime Addict –– both books are about vanishings, only Paul Auster's story is about the disappearance of everything, about a city's descent into the kind of staggered chaos that leads to increasing degrees of meaninglessness, until eventually entire ideas just disappear. It is a city devouring itself. The narrator goes to the city to search for a missing brother, only to be swallowed into the disaster herself. She never finds him. Instead she survives. This is a book of description, the narrator a defeated witness to history. Not everything is explained; not everything has to be. It's just that so much happens in the struggle for survival, and for meaning, that she's left with nothing but a dark compulsion to write it down. #thecityoflostthings #paulauster #cottagereading #murraycorner

Should you write a review without the book right in front of you? Perhaps. Perhaps, having read the book at some speed, the truth should be there without it. There but not there, embedded but fading. Truth is a slippery subject with this book. The author is like a storm chaser, but at least half the weather is inside his head. And what a dark horizon mind this is –– obsessed with monsters, followed by shadows and sadness. There is some appalling personal history mixed with troublesome personal tics. Meanwhile, the missing Maura Murray is little more than a persistent ghost, an enigmatic source of charged rumours, stories, and speculation. Vanishings are always fascinating, but Maura's plays out on a distinctly noir-cinema level. She is the black heart of this thing, yet missing. What kind of ending could this give us? What kind of ending could you possibly want? #truecrimeaddict #jamesrenner #cottagereading #murraycorner