Rating: 
Summary: An amazing and deceptively realistic read.
Review: I feel as though I can't possibly say enough about this book. Paul Auster's prose flows so naturally that I couldn't help thinking that I was reading an autobiography. So many of the discoveries M.S. Fogg, the narrator and main character, makes and the connections he finds seem bizzare. At times, they seem too bizzare to be possible, yet they are described so clearly I couldn't help but wonder how much of this was based on the author's personal experiences. I did a little bit of research online, and found that even the painting "Moonlight" by Ralph Albert Blakelock is real and exactly as Auster describes it.I feel as though this review doesn't do justice to this amazing book. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and honest barely begin to describe this incredible novel.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Good Book
Review: I've read allot of books and this book is in my top ten list. Paul Auster is a genius. This book is kind of like Mr. Vertigo because he travels around a little and it strange like Mr. Vertigo. This is a very good book, I highly reccomend it. After you read this book read Mr. Vertigo.
Rating:
Summary: An added bonus
Review: I read this book during my honeymoon. I enjoyed it so much, that it made my wife complain because I didn't spend enough time with her. Trust me, I have read pretty much everything Auster has written, and I found this to be his most interesting and captivating work.
Rating: 
Summary: Partly very good written but the outcome is not magnificent
Review: In the center of the book "Moon Palace" written by Paul Auster there is the protagonist Marco Stanley Fogg. Being an orphan he is perpetually searching for love and the key to the riddle of his fate and origin.
Since his childhood he grows up with his Uncle Victor who actually has not the ambition to replace Marco's father but wants to be a good friend of his. The first accounts of the story told by Fogg are therefore about this period of his life. The conditions of their environment constantly change e.g. there is once a woman called Dora Shamsky, Uncle Victor's mistress, enlarging the number of family members to three. Moreover they often change their home and move to other places. To put it all in a nutshell this is a period of harmony which abruptly ends as Marco gets older and wants to study. Victor joins forces with three younger musicians who play drums, piano and saxophone while he concentrates on the clarinet, meanwhile Marco Stanley Fogg moves to his first own apartment. One day Uncle Victor comes back and for the first time in all the years the narrator recognizes a note of defeat in his words as he admits "My bank statements reads nil, and the residents of Boise have no interest in encyclopedias" (page 31). A few days later he eventually dies without a concrete reason and is buried next to the mother of the protagonist.
However Marco founds himself alone in his apartment with his heritage consisting of some money for his degree at university, lots of boxes filled with Victor's library and of course the most important part of the legacy: the uncle's clarinet being a symbol for the relationship of the two men.
After starting at university the protagonist finally has to realize that the money in his possession is not able to guarantee his studies and simultaneously a life under normal conditions. Conclusively he has to change his way of life totally and eventually ends up as a tramp in Central Park after passing his final exam at university. There he lives and approaches starvation but is finally rescued by his friend Zimmer and a Chinese girl named Kitty who becomes his mistress afterwards.
As the main result of this appalling and dreadful experience he alters his behavior totally. From then on he wants to purify and purge himself by repenting his excesses. This yearning is even so tremendous that he "w[ill] think of others before I [think] of myself" (page 111). Consequently this attitude manifests in concrete actions: after having paid Zimmer for offering him food and a temporary home he finally finds a job appearing perfectly to him: he takes care of a blind and handicapped old man living in a old nobility-house. He earns good money, has not to work very hard and also has enough time to see Kitty. Finally it turns out that this job gains a tremendous significance for Marco as his relationship to the old man named Thomas Effing gets closer and deeper. After having read lots of books out to him Marco develops into the old man's secretary and chronicles the story of his life.
In my opinion it is an interesting book although it is not perpetually exciting. On one hand it starts outstandingly by describing the problems of the student lacking money. I asked myself various questions. Will he survive and pass his final exam? What will he do next? Will he fall in love with Kitty? On the other hand there are long passages that bore and annoy me. These are very strange passages that can be exemplified by the protagonist's life in Central Park as a tramp. Why does not work and earn money? He has successfully finished university, why does he not search for a job? Has he just studied because Uncle Victor wanted him to do so? Phenomena like this often appear in Auster's literature e.g. in his story "City of glass" focusing on a private detective who also develops into a tramp because he forgets about everything when concentrating on his investigations.
Actually this doesn't mean that I dislike all strange things in his works. For example it is a marvelous idea that Marco Stanley Fogg destroys himself bit by bit when reading the books of Victor's legacy. Every book that he sells blots out a part of his apartment and finally he solely posses the clarinet reminding him of his uncle. Johannes Weiß
Rating: 
Summary: mostly annoying
Review: After reading so many of the positive reviews on this page, I felt compelled to write my own. The opening of the novel is great, with the story unfolding as this young college kid trying to find himself and to survive...but as the story unfolds, it becomes annoying...the story becomes unbelievable, almost like a big joke with this long winded yarn being spun that leads this boy into a string of coincidences, eventually revealing knowledge of his family's past. the yarn is incredulous, silly, lacking in integrity due to this...and gets worse as the story grinds on. i was so annoyed that i finished the book out of spite for the author (if that makes any sense)i don't remember the ending because about 3/4 of the book defeated itself.
Rating: 
Summary: Read for the Moonlight - or at any other time
Review: I was encouraged by my bookish mother to pick up this novel, when I stayed with her a few years back, something I never did regret. This is the kind of stuff that explodes in your head, taking you on the ride of a lost and desperate young man, as he tries to connect his family-ties, in the aftermath of two tragic deaths; the one of his dare uncle and long lost mother, whom he hasn't seen in years. The story takes some highly increidible turns that will seem down-right unlikely to the reader, who all the same is "keept in there" by a playful and searching writer. I have just finished Leviathan, a piece of fiction that for me didn't give that much. All the same, I highly recommend other Paul Auster work, as I plunge into his fiction set in the first half of the last century, Mr. Vertigo.
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Summary: Sublime - The essence of Auster
Review: Paul Auster's "Moon Palace" is a dark, intellectual book about the loneliness and momentary as well as incurable basic identity-crisis (the angst) in the intellectually focus man. But it is also an amazing example of not only the "oh"-effect of chance but also of its intriguing beauty. This is as much Auster as Auster can be. It deals with his most common themes. But in this story it does so in a more subtle and delicate way than in "The New York Trilogy" and yet it can impossibly seem as empty as his small accounts of the impact of chance in "The Red Notebook" and "Why Write?" do to some. It is about something as basic as finding out where you come from and where you are going. And it tells us that we, ourselves, don't always seem to be the ones to decide.
Rating:
Summary: Auster's triumph
Review: Fogg is an extremely weird character, yet he is the perfect mediator between the reader and Auster's meditations on language. the book is beautifully written and includes amazing sceneries, as if we were actually reading artistic drawings. Auster tailors his visions with great plot[s] and eccentric characters. If this is your first Auster novel, you might be dissapointed in some of his other novels.Timbuktu, Leviathan, The music of Chance and Mr. Vertigo never reaches the beauty of Moon Palace and The New York Trilogy. The New York trilogy is a much more complex novel, and Auster's starting point in his contemplations on Derridian Deconstruction. Moon palace is an amazing follow up to Auster's Derridian arguments, and a great novel in itself.
Rating:
Summary: Very Enjoyable Read
Review: Great book, very well written. There were some unclear parts to it and I didn't like the ending very much, but overall definitely worth a try.
Rating:
Summary: Complex and entertaining
Review: This is one of Auster's strongest works. Moon Palace is difficult to summarize, and it would almost be easier to use a Venn diagram or a chronogram to describe the plot than to try to put it in words. Roughly speaking, the novel covers the curious life of M.S.Fogg, from his youth as an orphan to his strange days as a Columbia University graduate to his experience as caretaker of the eccentric Thomas Effing. But the novel is actually a series of stories and antecedents, all woven together through a tangled web of improbable coincidences and interactions. Many of the sections are virtually self contained. The tale of Fogg's inward retreat as an undergraduate culminating in his descent into homelessness in itself could be a well formed short story or novella. Likewise Effing's bizarre tale of adventure in the wilderness of Utah is story in itself. The links between these sections are a haphazard series of coincidences and connections, some which are seemingly intentionally suspect. Perhaps one of the most interesting stories-within-a-story literally *is* a story - Fogg's summary of a book written by Effing's long lost son, who in my opinion is one of the most interesting characters in the book. Auster's eye for detail and appreciation for the absurd is in top form in Moon Palace. More than one passage made me laugh out loud. This isn't conventional humor, Auster amuses through his sheer audaciousness - he is an author that takes risks and the reader appreciates this. The characters are an interesting mix. I found Effing to be fascinating, and his unpredictability largely mirrors the unpredictability of the novel itself, but he ultimately reads much like a caricature. The protagonist Fogg is complex and introspective, and it is a great success that Auster manages to allow the reader to connect with such a character. You'll find all of the characteristic Auster trademarks in Moon Palace: elements of mystery that border on pulp, unlikely characters bound by a web of coincidences, a study of connectivity vs. isolation, and all wound in Auster's amazing ability to depict the emotions and energy of New York City. Highly recommended.
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