I think it gave the effect that was intended- the unfair death of someone you love. The death of Archie-3 has me mixed as well. Dozens of pages for later chapters where very little of relevant events take place in Archie's life, like when Archie starts entering logs in a book, taking several pages, and having no impact on the story before or after. I was enjoying the book quite a lot, and I felt very happy knowing there was still hundreds of pages left.

I thought that 4321 was a big improvement in his tangent style of writing each chapter had their own theme for the Ferguson, and usually had some sort of peak in each individual chapter(the car crash, the death of Stanley, Archie-3's homoerotic endeavors). I feel that Auster has pacing issues, sometimes going hundreds of pages in his novel hitting on one note, like in The Book of Illusions where he spends quite a long time describing beat by beat a number of silent film plots- very interesting if you enjoy his tangents- but grueling other times if it doesn't click. For the first few hundred pages, I was hooked.

I was in a bookstore in February, and was very happily surprised to see him releasing a behemoth of a novel I had no idea existed, only coming out in January. I'm a big fan of Auster, and read most of his novels, and his autobiography. Now that it's all said and done, I'm torn between whether I loved the book or hated it. A two month period of my life reading Auster's newest and largest book, 4321, 900 pages of the lives of Archie Ferguson.

Paul auster 4321 reviews