Invisible (2009)

Invisible by Paul Auster

Invisible is ostensibly about Adam Walker, a precocious young poet who finds himself tugged into the vicious orbit of a French political-science professor after they're involved in a life-changing act of violence. But like so much of Paul Auster's work, its real subject is itself. The novel is arranged as a skein of nested perspectives (shifting from first to second to third person), and Auster handles the books-within-books and multiple narrators expertly, assembling the story's intricate moving parts with precision. The finished product, unfortunately, feels a bit cold and technical. All that virtuoso formalism leaves little room for the characters to breathe. B+

See all of this week's reviews