4321 by Paul Auster

4321

Paul Auster

This is like life lived through quantum theory. There are choices. There are possibilities. There is one character, but with four possible lives. These are reduced by chance and circumstance until there is only one man standing. You will have to make an effort to keep up, to remember which Ferguson is which and what happened to him when. But it is definitely worth the effort. You will enjoy this book, and the writing is astonishingly beautiful.

Extract
There was no God, Ferguson kept telling himself. There never had been and never would be a single God, but there were gods, many gods from many and all parts of the world, among them the Greek Gods who lived on Mount Olympus, Athene, Zeus, Apollo and the various others who had gamboled their way through the first two hundred and ninety-five pages of The Odyssey, and what the gods enjoyed more than anything else was meddling in the affairs of men.
Parallels
  • A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
  • A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
  • Lanark by Alasdair Gray
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Explicit sexual content