“Oracle Night” by Paul Auster (U.S.)

This was the first book we read for Nicola’s Book Club on 3^rd March 2005!

Synopsis

Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.

If The New York Trilogy was Paul Auster’s detective story, his mesmerizing eleventh novel reads like an old-fashioned ghost story. But there are no ghosts in this book – only flesh-and-blood human beings, wandering through the haunted realms of everyday life. Oracle Night is a narrative tour de force that confirms Auster’s reputation as one of the boldest, most original writers at work in the U.S. today.

Favourite Quote

‘Thoughts are real,’ he said. ‘Words are real. Everything human is real, and sometimes we know things before they happen, even if we aren’t aware of it. We live in the present, but the future is inside us at every moment. Maybe that’s what writing is all about, Sid. Not recording events from the past, but making things happen in the future.’

Nicola’s Book Club reading list

Season 1 (Feb – Jun 2005)
“Oracle Night” by Paul Auster (U.S.)
“Purple Hibiscus” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)
“Snow” by Orhan” Pamuk (Turkey)
“Empress Orchid” by Anchee Min (China) *
“The Way to Paradise” by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

* The book club favourite
In italics, Nicola’s Coup de Cœur