Review: Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster

Today, in January Magazine’s fiction section: a review of Paul Auster’s 13th novel, Travels in the Scriptorium.

Paul Auster’s 13th novel is almost wonderful. One gets the feeling that the author was reaching for something here, something he doesn’t quite attain. Part of the reason for this might be a simple lack of scope. The book is called Travels in the Scriptorium: A Novel. But that word -- Novel -- is misleading in this instance. At not quite 40,000 words, Travels in the Scriptorium is a novella, in every way one might think to use that word. As a novella, it feels like an experiment, a good one, at that. An extreme exercise in “what if?” But it lacks the heft and emotional weight one wants to associate with a novel of this type.

Read the whole review here.