Yzabel

I'm not sure what to think about this book. I can't say I didn't like it at all, but I was far from being thrilled.

I found it hard to get into it, for the first 50 pages or so (that is to say, one quarter of the novel...). One thing that really got on my nerves fairly quickly were the footnotes, some of which spanned over 4 or 5 pages. They felt like artificial inserts, like information that wasn't so necessary to the narrative itself (and that didn't add much to the characters, on top of it), and I'm pretty sure that Auster could've done much better than that if really those extras were so important to his story.

In fact, both the title and the 4th cover summary led me to expect something different, and I felt that things weren't exploited as well as they could have been (the stories within the story were interesting, so I would've liked the author to give them proper endings). Also the end was quite rushed and falling flat. The characters didn't appeal to me either, some of their reactions being frankly over the top. (Guys, you don't bully your wife into having a child against her will. No. Just no.) Not the best I've read of him.