Rating: 
Summary: Totally enjoyable.
Review: LEVIATHAN is an anti-establishment piece done without getting annoying, and without becoming too postmodern or preachy. Auster constructs an artsy but eminently readable intellectual conceit without getting so caught up in his ideas to prevent him from telling a good story. At a mere 272 pages, LEVIATHAN is a quick fun smart diversion. I purchased this book through Amazon.com right after another great purchase, THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez, about an unlucky writer/lost soul addicted to the personals. Both are fun, recommended books. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: wonderful
Review: Leviathan is brilliant - at once it is a story about art, about friendship, about love, about human longings. What Auster does brilliantly is to write about enormously complex themes in a readable way. Leviathan is a must-read. Paul Auster proves his brilliance once again with this novel.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun read
Review: Leviathan is the first book I have read by Paul Auster, and I found it absorbing and compelling, if a bit thin. It would be hard for this subject and structure NOT to be suspenseful -- the narrator is writing against time, trying to get the book finished before the FBI figures out what he knows, and we are told enough about the situation in the beginning to make us wonder how it all happened. How does a man who had been a successful writer end up killing himself while building a bomb? And what part does the narrator play in it all? These questions carry us through, and Auster's brisk, spare writing serves the suspense well.Unfortunately, the writing doesn't serve the characters very well. This is not a novel which will leave you with piercing portraits of unique people. Nor will it give you any great insights into modern life, or the meaning of the universe. That's okay, there are other books which do that, writers who are capable of tackling bigger stuff than Auster (check out Norman Rush, Catherine Bush, or the person to whom Auster has dedicated Leviathan, Don DeLillo). The virtues of Leviathan are its oddities; it's an entertaining novel with literary aspirations which it can't deliver on, but that doesn't mean the book's not entertaining. The novel's greatest virtue, perhaps, is its cleverness. It is a book about coincidences, about the improbable connections which zap through our lives. It is fruitless to criticize the book for being improbable, because that very improbability is its whole reason for being. Auster is audacious in his plotting, and he moves with speed and suspense through the narrative's many convolutions.
Rating:
Summary: Contemporary Literature at its Best
Review: Leviathan is the story of Benjamin Sachs, a writer and an ideologist, as told by his long time friend and fellow writer, Peter Aaron. As is revealed in the first few pages of the book, the story follows Sachs from the peak of his success, through a long decline and to his eventual untimely death. Like most of Paul Auster's other novels, "Leviathan" tells an intricate, convoluted and incredibly addictive story. Paul Auster is a master writer. The book is both entertaining and thought provoking. The characters are deep, complex and well crafted. Auster is able to maintain a credible plot even while introducing some tenuous twists into it. Like many of Auster's other novels, "Leviathan" explores the impact of chance and of seemingly random events on the course of human life. Auster's recurring themes: doubt, desperation and the frailty of the human condition are a central topic of this book. This is yet another masterpiece from one of the greatest writers of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Fiction at its best
Review: LEVIATHON by Paul Auster is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of American fiction we have. Auster takes elements from his own life and weaves them together with flights of the imagination. Auster is one of the few writers out there who consitently produces work that is entertaining and remarkable at the same time. Too many authors devote their talents to being "clever" or "difficult" these days. Auster, while at times experimental, never loses sight of what should be, what absolutely must be, every fiction writer's goal: To tell a story.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books of the century
Review: Not much more can be said about this incredible book. Paul Auster is a real master. A writer that capture you with his writing and don't let you stop reading and for me Leviathan is his masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary story written by a talented writer
Review: Paul Auster creates a character who seems to resemble himself in many ways. The story that he tells is about his life in Manhatten as a struggling writer and his friendship with another writer. Their lives intersect in odd but believable ways until his friend's life takes off in a completely wild trajectory after an accident(?). Auster is an unusually gifted storyteller who has a voice all his own. This book as well as many of his others have given me a great deal of pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: More brilliance from Paul Auster
Review: Paul Auster has to be one of the cleverest writers around, and one of the most rewarding. "Leviathan" tells the story of Peter Aaron's 15-year friendship with Benjamin Sachs - a wunderkind novelist and conscientious objector who, ultimately through violent protest, makes his political convictions a part of his everyday life. Running from the mid-seventies to 1990, this is a tour through Reagan's America and its somnambulistic abandonment of every value that makes America great. Once again, Auster usefully blurs the boundaries of autobiography and fiction, making his unlikely tale feel real. And his choice of a `mystery story' setup and personal tone are perfect: with its largely undramatized sequences presented in the casual, reflective style of a memoir, it never gets preachy despite its political intent; and our desire to uncover the mystery of just how and why Ben died pulls us effortlessly through the labyrinth to the end. For me, the final scene was remarkably touching - made even more so because it fails to pull any of the metafictive tricks Auster dangles before us as prospects in the opening pages. Compulsively readable, perfectly pitched, and ultimately about something important - novels don't get much better than this.
Rating:
Summary: More brilliance from Paul Auster
Review: Paul Auster has to be one of the cleverest writers around, and one of the most rewarding. "Leviathan" tells the story of Peter Aaron's 15-year friendship with Benjamin Sachs - a wunderkind novelist and conscientious objector who, ultimately through violent protest, makes his political convictions a part of his everyday life. Running from the mid-seventies to 1990, this is a tour through Reagan's America and its somnambulistic abandonment of every value that makes America great. Once again, Auster usefully blurs the boundaries of autobiography and fiction, making his unlikely tale feel real. And his choice of a 'mystery story' setup and personal tone are perfect: with its largely undramatized sequences presented in the casual, reflective style of a memoir, it never gets preachy despite its political intent; and our desire to uncover the mystery of just how and why Ben died pulls us effortlessly through the labyrinth to the end. For me, the final scene was remarkably touching - made even more so because it fails to pull any of the metafictive tricks Auster dangles before us as prospects in the opening pages. Compulsively readable, perfectly pitched, and ultimately about something important - novels don't get much better than this.
Rating: 
Summary: An austere and enormous entertainment
Review: Paul Auster is a blatantly theoretical novelist. He dissects and deconstructs literary genres and trends with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. But some accuse him of abandoning the delight of a story for a view from the ivory tower. I tend to disagree, for the most part, but offer up "Leviathan" as an example of an Auster book that's both a page-turner and a think-piece. For po-mo lit-lovers, Auster is in fine form. His modus operandi of casting himself as the literary quasi-detective is in full effect here. Narrator Peter Aaron (check those initials) is married to lovely Iris (Auster is married to novelist *Siri* Hustvedt). He is a writer by trade. "My books are published... people read them, and I don't have any idea who they are... as long as they have my book in their hands, my words are the only reality that exists for them," he says, defensively. The book he is currently writing -- and the book "you" are currently holding -- is an examination of his recently deceased friend, Benjamin Sachs ("Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of the road in Northern Wisconsin," reads the novel's enticing opening line). Sachs has enough vaguely roguish qualities to make "Leviathan" a fascinating picaresque. But he's also an idealist, and fiercely intelligent. He's a writer manque, whose first novel blew the critics away but was a failure with readers. Sachs is a character who exists mostly in absentia, periodically jumping back into Aaron's life to offer up enough details to tantalize his friend, and keep the reader off-balance. "Even though Sachs confided a great deal to me over the years of our friendship," Aaron says. "I don't claim to have more than a partial understanding of who he was. I can't dismiss the possibility that... the truth is quite different from what I imagine it to be." This is Auster playing with the concept of the unreliable narrator, only here the narrator is aware that he's unreliable. An interesting concept, that. But "Leviathan" is not just conceptual. It's loaded with intriguing personalities, and a lot of implicit suspense. And Auster's habit of digressing from the story to discuss an interesting tangent yields at least one fascinating sequence. Sachs' novel, entitled "The New Colossus", is summarized by Aaron. Auster spares no expense, creating an appealing advertisement for a historical page-turner that doesn't exist. But within that summary he also explicates some of his own novel's grander themes. The main one, and it's all over the place here, is America as a place of infinite possibilities for freedom but a failure in terms of realizing those possibilities. "America has lost its way," Aaron writes, when talking about the message of Sachs' book. "Thoreau was the one man who could read the compass for us, and now that he is gone, we have no hope of finding ourselves again." Further examination reveals that the Statue of Liberty, as an icon or just a concept, is "Leviathan's" dominant motif. It appears in Sachs' book and in a poignant memory from his childhood. The occasion of her hundredth birthday forms the background for the novel's great turning point. And if not for the Lady's presence, the climax of the book would be hokey and overwrought. As it is, she lends it dignity and class, amplifying its intensity and greatness. Using spare but consequential prose, Auster has written another novel that straddles the line between pulp and intricate fiction. It never panders to the unintellectual audience, but also never dumbs itself down. And it reaches that fine balance with seemingly relative ease, a trademark of Auster's other works. Try this one first before jumping to "The New York Trilogy" or "The Music of Chance". I dare say you won't be disappointed.
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