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Baumgartner

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Baumgartner

By: Paul Auster
Narrated by: Paul Auster
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About this listen

And then it started, little by little it started, until they were married five years later and his real life began.

'Exquisite ... A super-abundantly gifted, big-hearted novelist.' Ian McEwan

'A writer whose work shines with intelligence and originality.' Don DeLillo

The life of Sy Baumgartner - noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor - has been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife. Now Anna is gone, and Baumgartner is trying to live with her absence. But Anna's voice is everywhere still, in every spiral of memory and reminiscence, in each recalled episode of the passionate forty years they shared.

Rich with feeling, wit and an eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient episodes of ordinary life, Baumgartner is a luminous work - a tender final masterpiece from one of the world's greatest writers.
'A master.' The Times

©2023 Faber & Faber (P)2023 Faber & Faber
Family Life Literary Fiction

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Another great and moving story from Auster

Auster reads with a calm and sensitive tone, and his story of Baumgartner’s simple life is moving and thought provoking.

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Well written, underwhelming

I wanted this to be more engaging, more interesting, more anything. Mostly I wanted this novel to go somewhere and to have at least one character to be worth caring about. For me, this was vignettes from a long and not especially deep life. Some interesting snippets, sure, but nothing compelling enough to hold the whole together. While Auster is rightly a much lauded and respected writer, this novel didn't linger once I'd finished.

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