Sunset Park (novel)

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Sunset Park is a novel by the American writer Paul Auster from 2010.

overview

It was published by Faber & Faber in London in November 2010 ( ISBN 0571258786 ). The German translation by Werner Schmitz was published in summer 2012 ( ISBN 978-3-498-00082-0 ). The novel deals with individual tragedies and social crises in many facets. Against the background of the American financial crisis of 2008, Sunset Park tells the story of the 28-year-old university dropout Miles Heller, who has been on a self-imposed escape from his own past for over 7 years. Finally having found some peace with himself, he has to leave his current whereabouts in Florida and his 10-year-old girlfriend, the Cuban Pilar, and return to his home in New York. There he joins a group of squatters around his old friend Bing Nathan.

action

Miles comes from a well-off New York family. His parents divorced shortly after he was born. The father, Morris Heller, runs a small publishing house that has set itself the task of promoting promising new authors. His mother, Mary-Lee Swann, is an actress and has lived in California since the divorce. The stepmother Willa brought the 1 year older stepbrother Bobby into the marriage. When he was 18 years old, he was killed in a traffic accident for which Miles feels responsible. Since then, Miles never found himself right again and after studying for 3 years at an elite university, he decides to break with his previous life and end all contacts with his family. He travels the country for seven years. During this time, he lived in Chicago, California, and eventually Florida, and survived doing low-paying odd jobs.

In Florida he meets Pilar and falls in love with the very intelligent student. With Pilar only 17 years old, Miles runs the risk of a conflict with the law (he is threatened with reporting him) and decides to accept his old friend Bing's offer and come to New York. Bing is the only person from Miles' old life with whom he has kept in touch over the 7 years of his self-chosen exile. Unbeknownst to Miles, Bing kept his parents informed of the son's whereabouts and situation. Bing teamed up with Alice Bergstrom and Ellen Brice and occupied a vacant house in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood. Alice is working on her doctoral thesis on Americans after World War II. Ellen is a painter and works as a real estate agent to survive. The story ends with the police evacuating the occupied house, Miles struggling and injuring a policeman. He faces a situation similar to when Bobby died. Will he surrender or flee again? The reader remains in the dark and can continue to think the story further.

Reviews

As usual in Paul Auster's novels, all characters are described in detail and their actions are observed from different perspectives. For example, the relationship between Miles and the underage Pilar may seem unusual or even criminal to an outsider, but age does not matter to Miles himself. Miles' father Morris, when he finally reunited with his son and also got to know Pilar, interpreted the relationship with the fact that Miles got stuck in his emotional development in adolescence, when stepbrother Bobby died.

  • Brandon Robshaw of The Independent writes as a conclusion: The second half doesn't quite hold the narrative impetus of the beginning, but Oyster’s simple, clear writing forces you to read and his feeling for the complexity, moodiness, irony and the sheer damn interest in life is contagious. (English: The second half does not quite sustain the narrative impetus of the beginning; but Auster's easy, uncluttered writing is compulsively readable, and his feeling for the complexity, capriciousness, irony, and sheer damned interest of life is infectious. )

Web links

literature

    • Paul Auster: A life in words . A conversation with Inge Birgitte Siegumfeldt . German by Werner Schmitz and Silvia Morawetz. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2017 (409 pages), ISBN 978-3-499-27261-5 , on Sunset Park : pages 387-409

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/sunset-park-by-paul-auster-2293026.html

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