Rating: 
Summary: Great Book, Terrible Ending
Review: A Paul Auster novel is like getting a tarot card reading. Tarot cards each have an independent meaning and are interesting singularly. The "reader" is really a story teller and attempts to combine these randomly placed cards into a coherent overall story and/or meaning. Similarly, Auster's novels make use of continuing and very personal themes, events, characters, and ideas. In each of his books these very well developed and creative fascinations are blended and pieced together in narrative form. Whereas neither balance, order, nor harmony is attained, there is a tremendous rhythm, a music from selective chance. This style is worthy of the great appreciation he gets.This novel could have been his greatest. The characters were compelling. The stories within stories and historical backdrop were very rich. I learned much from this book. Every detail woven in it is worth a thousand images, perfect expressions of twentieth century America. However, the ending was at par with one of those cheesy new age books where two hypnotherapy patients have been seeing the same therapist for years and happen to sit next to each other on an airplane and find out not only this but that they have been married in 17 different past lives. I won't give any specifics about the ending away because evidently many people liked it, but it was ridiculous. Auster went too far at the end and destroyed the novel's integrity. Still, I would recommend it to anyone because 95% of it is absolutely brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: A Moon Palace for the Misbegotten
Review: Typical Auster: strong line writing, well-defined characters, coincidence-heavy plot, a nonexistent ending. The latter two separates Auster from the pool of countless other "literary" authors. Nobody else has Auster's uncanny ability to evoke the desperation of loneliness. This is a strange novel, but if you've read Auster before, it's going to feel as familiar as that pillow you sleep under every night. There's this guy named M.S. Fogg, he's an orphan, and all sorts of crazy things happen to him, some by his doing, some by coincidence. The density of Auster's plot is staggering; the entire story of Effing, a character Fogg meets, could easily have been another book. That whole section almost reads like a Reader's Digest version of a bigger book, but I didn't mind at all. I don't mind efficiency when it's done right. Don't expect much from the ending. It just is. If you expect a nice tidy package at the end, you're gonna be disappointed. Just take it for what it is. This is my third Auster, already having read "In the Country of Last Things" and "The New York Trilogy." I love them all. I'm also a fan of Haruki Murakami, and I highly recommend you check out his books if you like Auster. They have striking similarities: both tend to utilize an unsure unwilling first person voices (faux noir, almost), work with weird plots, have coincidences aplenty, and have nonstandard endings. - SJW
Rating: 
Summary: awsome !
Review: How can one resist Paul Auster ? His style and depth takes completely new dimensions from all that I have seen before. So charming and intriguing, his writing is fresh, spontaneous and moving. Well done, loved it !
Rating:
Summary: Great Book, Terrible Ending
Review: A Paul Auster novel is like getting a tarot card reading. Tarot cards each have an independent meaning and are interesting singularly. The "reader" is really a story teller and attempts to combine these randomly placed cards into a coherent overall story and/or meaning. Similarly, Auster's novels make use of continuing and very personal themes, events, characters, and ideas. In each of his books these very well developed and creative fascinations are blended and pieced together in narrative form. Whereas neither balance, order, nor harmony is attained, there is a tremendous rhythm, a music from selective chance. This style is worthy of the great appreciation he gets. This novel could have been his greatest. The characters were compelling. The stories within stories and historical backdrop were very rich. I learned much from this book. Every detail woven in it is worth a thousand images, perfect expressions of twentieth century America. However, the ending was at par with one of those cheesy new age books where two hypnotherapy patients have been seeing the same therapist for years and happen to sit next to each other on an airplane and find out not only this but that they have been married in 17 different past lives. I won't give any specifics about the ending away because evidently many people liked it, but it was ridiculous. Auster went too far at the end and destroyed the novel's integrity. Still, I would recommend it to anyone because 95% of it is absolutely brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant masterpiece
Review: This is the most wonderful book I've ever read.
A brilliant fiction.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful novel all around
Review: Moon Palace is an amazing book. It mirrors writings of Kerouac's "On the Road." It has a very American feel to it, encompassing the American dream somewhat. Read this book if you enjoy the Beat period or even Don Quixote. One of my favorite books.
Rating: 
Summary: Wild tale.
Review: Moon Palace is a wild tale told by a narrator who lost his parents at an early age, and suffered psychological damage as a result. I had little sympathy or interest in this character, nor did I feel the novel really explores any of the philosophical issues that the narrator is interested in. Never-the-less, once you get through the narrator's college days, the tale is wild and original enough to make the novel worthwhile. It has an old fashioned feel which I enjoyed. It also has one of those endings which makes the entire novel more meaningful. Incidentally, if you are interested in wild tales by narrators who have lost their parents at an early age and suffered psychological damage as a result, may I recommend When We Were Orphans by Kazko Ishiguro, which is a more accomplished work. P.S.: review by Undine gives away the ending.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommendable
Review: This book is such a pleasure to read, magic from beginning to end. It is different from other Auster books, but see for yourself!
Rating:
Summary: Coincidence
Review: I have never read Paul Auster before, I started to read it because I read that the book is about New York City.
The first part is interesting, still pessimistic but Fogg's character makes me read.
The second part, the big considences are not realistic and over pessimistic.
Overall I am glad that I have read a book of the author but I will not read any other books of him.
Rating:
Summary: A novel with different issues
Review: My personal experience:
This was the first book I read of Paul Auster. I found it by coincidence in a library and half closed it again because of the first sentence: "It was the summer that men first walked on the moon" and all the "I"s after that. Someone writing his boring biography connected with boring history? No thanks. But then, I thought: "Let's give it a second chance." I read for approximately three hours after that, without stopping. Suddenly, I found the story fascinating. I think you cannot say, unless you mean it for yourself, that something in this book is interesting or not interesting. If you are looking for an adventure story (some readers are tempted by the promises: "strange things happened to me...") you will have to chew yourself through pages and pages which are not filled with this sort of adventure tension. If you are looking for a "philosophy and mystery bomb", you will not be satisfied either, and if you are looking forward only to a love story (because there is one in this book), the rest will probably seem dull to you. The book is a great example of Paul Auster's "coincidence writing" that has annoyed or/and compelled many people. M.S. Fogg, the main character, meets his unknown father and his grandfather by coincidence and if it were not for coincidence, it would not have been for the book because he would probably have died of illness in the Central Park. The thing is that Auster does want to provocate people by telling them that "real life is stranger than fiction". For myself, I didn't even really notice that the book was full of coincidences until I read about them in the annotations (I had a different edition). It was the first part that fascinated me. This young man was what you called an intellectual and still, the despair causes him to submit himself to make an experiment with his life: he lives of as little as he can (I particularly remember well that he tested different candle types after the electricity had been cut of in his appartment) and thinks that if fate wants it so, he will die, but he doesn't care much. Some people say it is a good novel because of the many stories that are in it, others say they are bored because of the many biographies woven into it. People like me are intrigated by the way M.S. Fogg tries to submit to his fate, others think it completely nonsensical for a man like him to do this. If you know you like a special kind of books and Moon Palace isn't one of this kind, why not stick to what you like? If it interests you why people do something you do not understand and you try to not judge them quickly, if you like the way things seem to be connected, related in a way that is revealed to you by associations, Moon Palace is a book for you.
If you have got a so-called queer sense of humour, too. It is interesting to look at the book afterwards and say what has interested you most because this can tell you something about yourself.
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