PAUL AUSTER -- The BROOKLYN FOLLIES

A few years ago I caught Paul Auster on The Charlie Rose Show. Amid a conversation that ranged from his beloved Mets to his forays in filmmaking, Auster said he had no idea why the French liked his novels so much. Let me take a stab, Paul -- it probably has something to do with your preoccupation with existential despair, which when paired with your endlessly fascinating storytelling skills, results in one of the most distinctive voices on the current landscape. Auster's latest, The Brooklyn Follies, is yet another twisting tale rife with surprises. "I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn," says Nathan Glass, a 59-year-old retired life-insurance salesman who's recovering from a bout with lung cancer and a failed marriage. Soon after landing a two-bedroom apartment near Prospect Park, Glass begins writing The Book of Human Folly, an "account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible" he's come across over the years. Per usual, our loner protagonist quickly becomes the victim (or beneficiary) of Austerian chance: Glass runs into his long-lost favorite nephew, Tom Wood, a now flabby New Jersey transplant who dropped out of grad school -- he abandoned his "comparative study" of Poe and Thoreau, which is briefly recounted to high comic effect -- to disappear in the big city, first as a cabbie, now as a bookstore clerk. Tom's boss is the effervescent Harry Brightman, a gay raconteur with a shady past and soon-to-be present. The trio's lives become intertwined as the narrative takes intriguing, sometimes melodramatic detours -- Harry's prior troubles as an art dealer in Chicago, the puzzling appearance of Tom's mute niece, an extended car trip to Vermont. While the finale feels forced, The Brooklyn Follies compels for the usual reasons: Auster's spare, fluid prose and big imagination. (Jason Gargano) Grade: B

PAUL AUSTER -- The BROOKLYN FOLLIES (HENRY HOLT AND CO.)