We are entering the last days of the first bout of pop culture with many figures aging out with just their work staying behind and it is with this aging that each new piece from a favourite author or any other kind of creative figure becomes more and more precious.

Baumgartner is the latest novel from Paul Auster and comes as a surprise following the epic 4 3 2 1 and see the eponymous character looking back upon his life with his late wife, his childhood and his ancestry.

It is very much a book of an old man looking back and it would be an interesting task to parse out the non-fiction from the fiction within this tale. There is the Austerian device of stories within stories as we read essays and poems by his late wife and tales written by Baumgartner himself.

It is a slim novel, but it is absolutely packed with substance and a book I found to be devastatingly sad in places. For me, the novel was let down only by it's ending which felt hollow compared with what had gone before it.

Suffice to say, I am delighted to have another Auster novel and hope there are at least a few more to come!