Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Book of Illusions: A Novel
    The Book of Illusions: A Novel
    The Book of Illusions: A Novel
    Ebook344 pages7 hours

    The Book of Illusions: A Novel

    By Paul Auster

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A man's obsession with a silent-film star sends him on a journey into a shadow world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love

    Six months after losing his wife and two young sons in an airplane crash, Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. Then, watching television one night, he stumbles upon a clip from a lost silent film by comedian Hector Mann. Zimmer's interest is piqued, and he soon finds himself embarking on a journey around the world to research a book on this mysterious figure, who vanished from sight in 1929 and has been presumed dead for sixty years.

    When the book is published the following year, a letter turns up in Zimmer's mailbox bearing a return address from a small town in New Mexico-supposedly written by Hector's wife. "Hector has read your book and would like to meet you. Are you interested in paying us a visit?" Is the letter a hoax, or is Hector Mann still alive? Torn between doubt and belief, Zimmer hesitates, until one night a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him, changing his life forever.

    This stunning novel plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic, the real and the imagined, the violent and the tender dissolve into one another. With The Book of Illusions, one of America's most powerful and original writers has written his richest, most emotionally charged work yet.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateOct 27, 2009
    ISBN9781466817654
    The Book of Illusions: A Novel
    Author

    Paul Auster

    Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Oracle Night, The Book of Illusions, and Timbuktu. I Thought My Father Was God, the NPR National Story Project anthology, which he edited, was also a national bestseller. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

    Read more from Paul Auster

    Related to The Book of Illusions

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      An Innocent Abroad

      May 1, 2020

      An Innocent Abroad
      6 min read

    • Article

      How to Be Lonely: A Booklist

      Oct 12, 2017

      The Door wrecked me in an already wrecked state last January. The book dwells on humans and their secrets and suggests a gruff sort of love that might entail just leaving people alone. The post How to Be Lonely: A Booklist appeared first on The Milli

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tennis Is the Opposite of Death: A Proof

      Jun 8, 2021

      Tennis is not the only sport with skew angles. Pool has skew angles and spin and backspin. But pool is murk, pool is cramped in the dark. Soccer has geometry and passing shots, but teams, not individual players like tennis. Soccer has sun, like tenni

      17 min read

    • Article

      Backsiders

      Mar 15, 2022

      We lived in a poor part of town but we had the greatest entertainment. We had the goldfish ponds, we had Motorcycle Hill, we had the dump and Bicycle Jenny. We made rafts for the creek. We lived off the land. Down the street was a family who’d moved

      18 min read

    • Article

      If You Are Permanently Lost

      Dec 15, 2019

      I never have any idea where I am. I lived my whole childhood in the purple foothills of the same five-square-mile town and I still couldn’t tell you whether you turn left or right on the single thruway to get to the grade school or the grocery store,

      7 min read

    • Article

      Fiction is a Power Trip: The Millions Interviews Eleanor Henderson

      Sep 25, 2017

      "I think we have to acknowledge that fiction does have that dangerous allure. Is it presumptuous? Sure. It’s a sacred enterprise, it’s the best means of empathy and understanding we have, and it’s also presumptuous." The post Fiction is a Power Trip:

      10 min read

    • Article

      A Letter from New York

      Dec 10, 2019

      A Letter from New York
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Books That Made My Father

      Jan 26, 2023

      There was much to do after my father died last year, following a prolonged bout with blood cancer. Not just the funeral arrangements but the other logistical matters: ridding my parents’ house of medical supplies, sorting through financial documents.

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Space for Bette Howland

      May 6, 2019

      A Space for Bette Howland
      7 min read

    • Article

      Jonathan Coe: ‘People Say, Where’s The Anger? It’s Still There’

      Aug 19, 2023

      In a career spanning more than 35 years, notable for novels such as What a Carve Up! and The Rotters’ Club, author Jonathan Coe has established himself as one of the UK’s keenest satirists. His works have become bestsellers in translation, and he’s b

      4 min read

    • Article

      The GONZO GUYS

      Jan 2, 2022

      The GONZO GUYS
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year In Reading: Garth Risk Hallberg

      Dec 18, 2021

      Simply put, Yoon Choi is the most ambitious and accomplished practitioner of the Chekhovian short story to appear in many years. The post A Year In Reading: Garth Risk Hallberg appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Book of Illusions

    4/5

    1,110 ratings34 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      “What matters is not how well you can avoid trouble, but how you cope with trouble when it comes.”"Everyone thought he was dead." is the opening sentence of this book and refers to Hector Mann, a 1920's silent film actor who had mysteriously disappeared in 1929. Nearly sixty years later Professor David Zimmer life unravels when his wife and two young sons plummet seven miles to their deaths in a plane crash. Zimmer disappears into zombie-like world mired in alcoholic grief and self-pity. Six months later whilst channel surfing in the early hours of the morning Zimmer stumbles across a screening of a Hector Mann movie. He finds himself laughing and released from his acute pain for the first time since his family's deaths and decides to seek out Mann's other works. In doing so he finds himself drawn into a shadowy nether world of death, lies and unexpected love, tracking down one man so that he might lose himself.Mann was a talented actor in a white suit and an expressive moustache but just as his career seemed to be taking off suddenly vanished. Zimmer spends hours alone in tiny viewing theatres studying all of Mann's films learning a little about the man's public life along the way. When Zimmer has a book published about the films he mysteriously receives an invitation to meet the actor himself. Zimmer is sceptical and intrigued in the same measure. Zimmer discovers that Mann is not dead after all and with the help of the actor's sort of adopted daughter finds himself in the New Mexico desert only to arrive hours before the reclusive old man's death. Along the way he learns a little of what actor has been doing since his disappearance as well as unexpected love.This then is a Gothic detective story where the dead have all the best lines, "when our backs are right up against the wall. You have to die first to know how to live." There is a crime, there is love, loss and guilt, along with many of the usual Gothic elements ( murderer, prostitute, deceived wench, hidden body and a secret book). Both men hit rock bottom and been raised up again; both feel guilt and the need to do penance.On a couple of occasions the prose felt a little forced but generally I found this a powerfully written tale. I loved the depiction of Mann's films, I could almost view them in my mind's eye but I felt the image of Zimmer playing with his sons' Lego and burying his face in his wife's clothes that still smell of her perfume was particularly powerful and poignant. Each man's life has echoes in the other's and sometimes I wondered whether the author had overdone this element but all the same I found myself unwilling to put the book down, always wanting to read the next chapter. A very enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      One of Auster's best works, this story about an eccentric film maker is a romp with a dark side. He could be channeling a number of real artists- two that come to mind: Chaplin and Kubrick.well done.
    • 4/5
      I had no idea at all what I was walking into with this title, but I'm very glad I decided to pick it up. Excellent writing with a unique plot that quickly hooks, and great characters.
    • 4/5
      Masterful. Hypnotic and absorbing. Stories within a story, but the transitions are like falling from one dream into another. David's life has been broken by the death of his wife and sons and what healing he has done was in giving himself to the 12 silent films by Hector Mann which have recently re-surfaced - his book about them resulting in contact from someone who claims Mann is alive and wants to talk to him. Eventually Mann's life is described to him by Alma and it too has been broken by tragic death. Both David's and Mann's life are hinged on dual unconnected violence.
    • 4/5
      I had a little difficulty making my way through this book, but the ending was interesting enough to make it all worthwhile. The story was of a writer, David Zimmerman, who became enamored of the silent films of Hector Mann to the point of writing a book about the actor. After sound films came into vogue, Hector Mann disappeared completely. David's adventures serendipitously put him in the position, a great many years later, of finding out that Hector Mann was still alive. At first he was reluctant to believe this was true, but he was finally convinced when a woman named Alma comes to his door to beg him to visit Hector Mann before he dies. So many things happen in this book that I was getting a little weary and confused about where the story was heading. From the point at which I was able to determine that Hector Mann was still alive, things became clearer and more interesting to me. This is not always an easy story to follow, but it is the magic and creative writing of Paul Auster's strange and complex novel that makes this a fun read. If you choose to read this book, know that you have quite a plot to work through...and then just come along for the ride!
    • 4/5
      "The Book of Illusions" is one of the most appropriate titles I have run across. In it, Paul Auster describes a continual series of misconception, misapprehension, broken promises, regret ... let us count the ways.The illusions revolve around a series of silent film actors and producers. Each principal believes he or she can have a life with another who wants nothing to do with it. Hector Mann, a main player in this drama, left filmmaking many years ago and directed that all his oevre be destroyed, reducing all of it to the level of an illusion. Did it ever really exist? He lived in a ranch in New Mexico, called the Blue Jewel until his (accidental? suspicious?) death. In one of the great and grand illusions of this book, he named his ranch after a brief but memorable episode in his life: he is out walking his dog on a damp evening, when he thinks he sees a jewel asparkle on the sidewalk. He inspects it closely only to find it a shiny spot of spittle. Auster is a robust prose artist. His plot pulls us along but has the delicacy to reflect and reverberate against and within itself. This story will engage you, and will make you wonder at Auster's skill.
    • 5/5
      This was curious. I had previously rated (but not reviewed) this book. It did not seem at all familiar, but it was awesome. Could I have forgotten it? Bought it and didn't get around to reading it? Both seem highly unlikely. That said, I loved it. I've always been partial to his earlier, NYC-based books, but this was a beautiful story of love and loss, or rather loss and love. It references a couple works that weren't published/produced until five or six years later. As always, coincidences creep up in my life when I read his works. It was a pleasant surprise.
    • 3/5
      Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe this is the only Paul Auster book I have to ever read. I've heard that they all follow the same theme.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Professor David Zimmer is drowning his sorrows after a horrific plane crash kills his wife and two sons, when he comes across the slapstick silent films of Hector Mann. Mann is an enigma who never gave the same story twice of who he was and where he came from before he made films in the 1920s and disappeared in 1929 never to be heard from again. Zimmer writes the definite book of Mann's films and receives a shocking letter, inviting him to meet Hector Mann himself in New Mexico.This book is incredibly difficult to wrap my head around and explain what I think. Auster certainly writes sentences well, sometimes bringing me up short with the perfection of a single thought. The descriptions of films are superb. But as for the actual story, I found myself second-guessing every last detail. Did this "really" happen, or is it all a figment of Zimmer's imagination? What are the illusions - the films, the story, life itself? It's just the sort of postmodern hard-to-follow plot one of my brothers loves and I can't stand, because I feel unsettled, questioning, and a little miffed that the author is holding something back from me (or making me fill in part of the blanks of the story - am I doing it right? Did he really mean for me to question everything?). The parallels between Zimmer and Mann, for example, made me wonder about the veracity of the story. I didn't particularly care for the story or the characters, and though I'm sure the ambiguity will make for a fantastic book discussion, this is not the type of book I tend to finish left to my own devices.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      BkC 3) Sorry I read it, and what a slog.Another one where I stand by my one-liner. Ye gods and little fishes, what a snore!The Book Report: Protagonist loses family, isolates self from world to plumb solipsistic depths of grief and depression, discovers obsessive interest in an artist now of no great interest, sets out to rediscover and rehabilitate said artist, succeeds, and through a miracle of identification with the vanished artist's sufferings which mirror his own, protagonist resumes living in the real world again.My Review: Does that sound familiar? It ought to...it's also the plot of the over-praised and underwhelming "New York Trilogy." Every writer, every artist, rides their hobbyhorses. Nothing new there. The question is, do you want to go along for the ride? In Auster's case, I do not.But why not? Because I experienced a lot lot lot of grieving very early in life, when the AIDS epidemic was at its height. I lost every gay friend I'd made. I volunteered as a helper in the hospital...just showed up and did stuff, no training, no pay, and lots of nurses and porters would teach me what to do so they wouldn't risk getting the disease.I held a lot of hands as men died. I saw a few mothers come to their sons' bedsides to excoriate them one last time for being queer and so embarrassing the church, the family, god. I had no idea what to say to their terrified faces as they died at 23...27...31.But I fuckin' got up every morning and I went and DID SOMETHING.I have ZERO tolerance for these a-holes who think their teensy little selves are so important that their pain is all that matters in the world. SHUT THE FUCK UP and get out of your own asshole and DO SOMETHING.Okay, unsympathetic much? Yes. I lost the love of my life to AIDS in 1992. He died at 35. I do not want to hear crap from anyone about depression 'cause I been there too, and didn't treat it like it was All Important. I went to the doctor, I got help, I gave up some very unpleasant addictions, and I got on with life the whole time.And I would give anything I have ever had to have my man back. Anything. I miss him fiercely even now, 20 years later.So Mr. Auster can keep his wet-mouthed wet-eyed puling to his damn self.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      After his wife and two children die in a plane crash, Vermont professor Dave Zimmer passes several months in a daze of grief. Then one day, something he sees on TV makes him laugh for the first time since the tragedy. He had caught a glimpse of an excerpt from a silent film starring the actor Hector Mann, who he later learned had vanished at the height of his career and was never heard from again. Zimmer becomes fascinated, perhaps obsessed, with Hector Mann, and begins a quest to view and study all of Mann's existing films. Ultimately, Zimmer writes a book on Mann's films, but the mystery of Mann's disappearance remained unsolved.Then, shortly after his book on Hector Mann is published, Zimmer received a letter purportedly from Mann's wife saying Hector would like to meet with him. Zimmer initially discounts this as a hoax, but developments proceed to show him otherwise.This like most of the books by Auster I've read was eminently readable, and I'm always amazed at the inventiveness and creativity of his plots and the absolute reality of his characters. This was a most satisfying read, and I will continue to read the several Auster books I have remaining unread on my shelf, as well as any new ones I come across. Recommended.4 stars
    • 5/5
      Fantastic book from the 1001 books list. A writer puts his family on a plane to meet a deadline, & the plane crashes, killing all souls on board. Spiraling into a deep depression, he nearly drinks himself to death till he happens on an obscure black & white silent comedy featuring Hector, who is himself a mystery because he was only on the movie scene long enough to create 12 films, then disappeared. Our professor decides to travel the world to see these 12 movies, which were mailed to movie houses in different cities worldwide, by a mysterious sender. At the end of this odyssey, he writes the only definitive book on Hector, & receives a letter by a woman calling herself Hector's wife, & inviting him to travel to New Mexico to see Hector before he passes away. Bit by bit, Hector's life is revealed, & it's an enthralling tale.
    • 2/5
      Eh. Had promising parts, but it's hard to put my finger on exactly why I didn't like it. For one thing, I think it was a mistake to have so much of the story told in flashback/past tense.
    • 3/5
      I had heard mixed reviews about this book, but the topic interested me, so I decided to give it a shot. I have to admit that I can see both what people loved about it as well as what some others hated. My opinion is that the book was neither wholly good or bad, but rather that it had both positive and negative elements.First of all, the concept and the rich imaginative story within a story (loved the descriptions of the movies and their story lines) were great. These were my favorite portions of the book. However, there were also moments when the plot elements felt a bit contrived. For example, I do know a large number of artists and I really can't think of any who would spend decades working on masterpieces with the intention of never showing them to anyone and insisting that these be burned within 24 hours of the artist's death. This was a disconnect for me, and it may have interfered with my enjoyment of the book some. Sometimes our own life experiences color our interpretation of a book as well as our enjoyment of it, and I think this may have been what happened for me.
    • 4/5
      I must say that this novel didn't hook me as much as some of Auster's other books. While the concept was intriguing, art for art's sake, traveling through time to reconstruct art and art as salvation, none of these themes are particularly novel and I didn't find their treatment very original either. I think it was the excess that bothered me, not in Frieda's actions, but in Alma's, starting with her threat with a gun.The read itself is enjoyable: I liked Hector's adventures, the descriptions of the desert, the makeshift studio and the movies, but I found they were an excuse for a story rather than a story in itself. For me, Hector's choices and life would have had much more impact recounted through him, rather than through two characters, who although well delineated, stayed rather mysterious.
    • 3/5
      An interesting book that probably would make a better film (since half of the book describes old films). I'd be curious to see this made, but I doubt it will happen. I don't really like Auster, but found myself enjoying this book. And my cousin who doesn't read novels LOVES Auster. I guess it's just not my thing.
    • 3/5
      This is a brutally sad novel about redemption and confrontation of guilt. Not a wonderfully happy topic, but the themes do well in Auster's story, which is very refreshing and creative. Not his best work but certainly an engrossing one.
    • 3/5
      I’m not sure if I just didn’t like it or just didn’t get it. I liked parts of the story a lot, the execution just didn’t do much for me. It had the feeling of someone telling you a long story that seems interesting but in the end you’re thinking "is there a point to this?"
    • 3/5
      Professor David Zimmer's wife and two sons have died in a plane crash and he is at loose ends, slowly drinking himself to death, when he sees a clip from one of Hector Mann's silent films on a TV retrospective show. It makes him laugh. He embarks on a project to see all of Mann's films and write a book about them. Mann disappeared in the 1920's and no one has heard from him since. When David's book is published, he receives a mysterious letter that may shed some light on Hector's disappearance. David is an elegantly realized character with a dynamic arc throughout. I found his story, and that of Mann, rather fascinating. However, there were a few things that didn't work for me. First of all, there are no quotation marks around any of the dialogue. This becomes very confusing, particularly when a character's thought or a small sentence about the action is inserted between lines of dialogue and it is not readily apparent who is speaking. Second, David describes several of Hector's films all the way through. While this is generally pretty well done, with a lot of detail, it is difficult to picture all of these scenes and becomes kind of a slog. Third, I felt as though I had invested quite a lot into both David and Hector, and was very disappointed by the ending. I won't spoil it for you, but if you're a fan of "they all lived happily ever after" you will definitely not be pleased.
    • 4/5
      An academic grieving for his wife and children finds distraction in writing a book about a minor silent movie actor, Hector Mann, who disappeared mysteriously in 1929. One day, he receives a letter from someone claiming to be Hector's wife saying that Hector is still alive, and would like to meet him. For the most part I thought this was excellent, brilliantly written and intriguing, a smart book that also managed to be a really compelling mystery. I was slightly disappointed by the ending, not because it was bad or inappropriate, but because it didn't quite have the kick that could have made this a truly brilliant or even great book. Still very, very good though.
    • 3/5
      A sad story of a widower who lives in pain after the death of his family in a plane chrash. He is wasting his life until somebody on a film awakens him. So good, but so sad.
    • 5/5
      This is my favourite Auster novel.Hector Mann, a minor auteur of the silent film era disappeared from public view in 1929. At the start of 'The Book of Illusions' we are introduced to another character, David Zimmer, a literary professor from Vermont, who has also retired from public view after the tragic death of his wife and children in a aeroplane accident. He is rescued from his alcoholic depression by the serendipitous viewing of a short clip from one of Mann's movies shown on the television. He laughs. And resolves to shake himself out of his torpor by investigating his disappearance and writing his biography. After some research he receives a letter purporting to be from Mann's wife.The Book of Illusions follows an unusually coherent storyline for Auster and the mystery of Hector Mann's career and life is teased out in rich prose. It can't be a coincidence that the main protagonists are Zimmer and Mann, but why Auster would allude to Bob Dylan in this book seems imponderable.
    • 3/5
      Stories within stories within stories. Narrator David Zimmer, a lit professor at a New England college, begins the tale in the 1980s, just after the deaths in a plane crash of his wife and two young sons. Immobilized by grief, he begins the trek back to life after serendipitously viewing a film by silent star Hector Mann. That the film moved him to laughter, to forget his misery for a moment, seemed to him a sign. So he sets off to view all dozen movies Mann made before mysteriously dropping off the face of Hollywood in 1929, and in the process sets himself the life-saving task of writing a book about them. After its publication he gets an invitation from a women who says she is Mann's wife and inviting Zimmer to their New Mexico ranch. Zimmer isn't sure it's not a hoax and is reluctant to fly but eventually is induced to accept the invite by a birthmarked, gun-toting woman, Alma Grund, who first threatens to kill him and then even more unbelievably ends up in his bed. Here the book turns into the even more improble story of Hector Mann after his disappearance, as Alma and Zimmer rush to New Mexico to view Mann's homemade, never-before-seen films before he dies. His will specifies that on his death his films are to be burned, celluloid to ash, to cover up both his lengthy existence and atone for his sins. Zimmer manages to view one of them, which he describes at length, and it too weaves in and out of parallels to his own story. What is truth? What is fiction? Who is living a lie? By the time Zimmer and Alma got on that plane, I frankly didn't much care anymore; the two of them are an odd mix of pedestrian and pretentious and their dialogue flatlines way before Hector Mann does.
    • 5/5
      David Zimmer loses his wife and sons in a plane crash and his life begins to spin out of control. Then one night he watches a silent screen comedian and, for the first time in months, he laughs. His life becomes his search for information about the work of this comedian, an obscure and mysterious man, Hector Mann. The Book of Illusions spins and whirls, spiraling at times into its own shadows. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      What a stellar writer! I know I am not the first to feel this way about Paul Auster, but it is thrilling to read such a fine author for the first time. Auster has created characters who will never be forgotten, despite their disappearances, namely, Hector Mann, David Zimmer and others. This book is like a wave which crashes over you and pulls you into it like a force of nature. The layering of the plot is fabulous. The story turns in on itself over and over, like that crashing wave. The themes of grief, penance, survival, and sheer humanity are powerfully explored with lovely use of language. A must read!
    • 4/5
      Great American story for a so-hot vacation in Greece ! Enjoyed every single word of it, while taking neverending night showers... A vacation to remember.
    • 5/5
      Professor David Zimmer is a broken man following a plane crash that killed his wife and two young sons. Overcome with grief, he drowns his sorrows in booze until one night, as he watches a tv documentary, he bursts out laughing at the sight of Hector Mann acting in a silent comedy from the 1920's. When he learns that the actor disappeared without a trace in 1929 Zimmer is sufficiently intrigued to try to find out more about Mann and his work. Enthralled with Mann’s genius in both creating and acting in physical comedy, Zimmer devotes the following year to tracking down Mann’s movies and writing a book on this man who has been an enigma ever since his disappearance. This is just the beginning of Zimmer’s journey and soon he finds himself more closely involved with Hector Mann’s story than he could ever have imagined.Paul Auster is in top form in this book and the storytelling is engrossing. For nearly a whole chapter, Zimmer describes one of Hector Mann’s comedies in great detail—giving a scene by scene description of the cast, the action, the sets, the various facial expressions, right down to Mann’s skillful mustache twitches—which are apparently prominently featured in his movies. What I found fascinating was that while this exercise might have become tedious, on the contrary, he managed to make the description of this silent movie absolutely captivating and I quickly suspended disbelief and indeed started imagining that these movies truly do exist. This is only one of the many layers of illusions in this book, and this story lingers on well after the last lines have been read. This is my third Paul Auster novel so far, but something tells me there will be a few more.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book so much when I listened to a borrowed audio version, I bought a hardcover copy for my personal collection.Here are my comments on the audio version(November 20, 2006) : I've been listening to the audio version of this book on my daily commute. I just finished it and I have to say that I loved it. Auster is an amazing reader (you never know what you're going to get when you have an author reading his or her own book) and is very believable as narrator David Zimmer.David's own storyline is interesting in and of itself, but Auster augments it, intertwining it to splendid effect with that of Hector Mann, a silent film star who mysteriously disappeared in 1929, and (to a lesser extent) with that of 19th Century French writer François-René de Chateaubriand.There was a moment when I thought that the ending would ruin the book for me, but at the last minute Auster ties things up marvelously producing an ending that is both realistic and satisfying for the reader.
    • 5/5
      I come to this author late: this is his sixteenth or-so work, but the first I have read. I write this as a prelude, in that this review comes from a total ignorance of Paul Auster’s oeuvre, and, as such, this lack of knowledge may colour my perception; or not. Regardless, after reading this novel I am now, patently and arrantly, a huge fan!The Book of Illusions contains quite an intricate premise and it is somewhat difficult, I feel, to succinctly define the core of its being. It begins with David Zimmer, a professor of comparative literature at Vermont, and a book he has written – the only one on the subject: The Silent World of Hector Mann. Told exclusively from David’s viewpoint, the story in The Book of Illusions - adroitly configured as another book by David - firstly introduces Hector Mann and his creative life, but quickly weaves the recent traumatic events of the professor's current subsistence into the mix: to clarify, not only, the reasons for writing this book about Hector, but the reasoning behind many of his past and present actions. For when David’s family – his wife and two young boys - are killed in a plane crash there follows many months of numbness, of self-absorption, with a total disregard for any normality in his life and a complete refusal to even contemplate the future; all this ironically possible due to the financial compensation from the accident. But a late-night unexpected TV viewing of a silent film, one of twelve made by Hector Mann in the 1920s, results in the first laugh escaping David’s lips in all this time and leads to his journey back, through these films, into a semblance of improved existence; studying and writing about Hector’s films ultimately providing a means of escaping his inconsolable grief. But, when David is contacted by Hector Mann’s wife, sometime after his book is published, and asked to meet the man most assumed had died sixty years ago, events become very complicated, allowing for a complex juxtaposition within a study of two tortured souls; and their differing paths to finding a redemption of sorts.Reading more, at times, like non-fiction, what overwhelmed me significantly with this book was the ease of the exposition Paul Auster delivers in the creation of this tale. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a fictitious chronicle – at times I felt almost obliged to check if such an artist named Hector Mann actually existed! And the exquisite detailing offered about each film, the consequent clarity of the images the author constructs, possibly defies belief – the imagery flowing effortlessly across the pages until there resides a true cinematic notion rather than just some elaborate, albeit clever, textual concept. There are such vivid visual ideas portrayed within the lines of this prose. How I wanted to see these films too! For amongst this sophisticated celluloid metaphor is a convoluted true perspective: on life, and death, with the usual multitude of obscurities between them; and the methods these two men use to deal with it all. And more importantly, the illusions that manifest within actual and fabricated worlds.This is truly a highly-wrought, stylish piece - a perfectly-written account defined by a well-crafted beginning and middle, and with an outstanding ending. On further investigation I was unsurprised to learn Paul Auster is a writer, a director and a one-time actor – underscoring the validity of the book. And adding to my delight is an understanding and a use of language, which allows the author’s eloquence and writing skill to shine intensely throughout the composition. A testament to his ability, this is an author whose other works I will actively seek, and decidedly enjoy. To my mind, just brilliant!(Nov 12, 2008)
    • 4/5
      This was a very interesting book that revolves around a silent film actor, Hector Mann, who disappeared in the 20's. A college professor, David Zimmer, is suffering after the death of his wife and children when he laughs for the first time at Hector Mann's actions in one of his silent movies. Zimmer undertakes a thorough study of Mann's volume of work, but little does he know, Mann continued to make movies after his disappearance.

    Book preview

    The Book of Illusions - Paul Auster

    1

    EVERYONE THOUGHT THE was dead. When my book about his films was published in 1988, Hector Mann had not been heard from in almost sixty years. Except for a handful of historians and old-time movie buffs, few people seemed to know that he had ever existed. Double or Nothing, the last of the twelve two-reel comedies he made at the end of the silent era, was released on November 23, 1928. Two months later, without saying good-bye to any of his friends or associates, without leaving behind a letter or informing anyone of his plans, he walked out of his rented house on North Orange Drive and was never seen again. His blue DeSoto was parked in the garage; the lease on the property was good for another three months; the rent had been paid in full. There was food in the kitchen, whiskey in the liquor cabinet, and not a single article of Hector’s clothing was missing from the bedroom drawers. According to the Los Angles Herald Express of January 18, 1929, it looked as though he had stepped out for a short walk and would be returning at any moment. But he didn’t return, and from that point on it was as if Hector Mann had vanished from the face of the earth.

    For several years following his disappearance, various stories and rumors circulated about what had happened to him, but none of these conjectures ever amounted to anything. The most plausible ones—that he had committed suicide or fallen victim to foul play—could neither be proved nor disproved, since no body was ever recovered. Other accounts of Hector’s fate were more imaginative, more hopeful, more in keeping with the romantic implications of such a case. In one, he had returned to his native Argentina and was now the owner of a small provincial circus. In another, he had joined the Communist Party and was working under an assumed name as an organizer among the dairy workers in Utica, New York. In still another, he was riding the rails as a Depression hobo. If Hector had been a bigger star, the stories no doubt would have persisted. He would have lived on in the things that were said about him, gradually turning into one of those symbolic figures who inhabit the nether zones of collective memory, a representative of youth and hope and the devilish twists of fortune. But none of that happened, for the fact was that Hector was only just beginning to make his mark in Hollywood when his career ended. He had come too late to exploit his talents fully, and he hadn’t stayed long enough to leave a lasting impression of who he was or what he could do. A few more years went by, and little by little people stopped thinking about him. By 1932 or 1933, Hector belonged to an extinct universe, and if there were any traces of him left, it was only as a footnote in some obscure book that no one bothered to read anymore. The movies talked now, and the flickering dumb shows of the past were forgotten. No more clowns, no more pantomimists, no more pretty flapper girls dancing to the beat of unheard orchestras. They had been dead for just a few years, but already they felt prehistoric, like creatures who had roamed the earth when men still lived in caves.

    I didn’t give much information about Hector’s life in my book. The Silent World of Hector Mann was a study of his films, not a biography, and whatever small facts I threw in about his offscreen activities came directly from the standard sources: film encyclopedias, memoirs, histories of early Hollywood. I wrote the book because I wanted to share my enthusiasm for Hector’s work. The story of his life was secondary to me, and rather than speculate on what might or might not have happened to him, I stuck to a close reading of the films themselves. Given that he was born in 1900, and given that he had not been seen since 1929, it never would have occurred to me to suggest that Hector Mann was still alive. Dead men don’t crawl out from their graves, and as far as I was concerned, only a dead man could have kept himself hidden for that long.

    The book was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press eleven years ago this past March. Three months later, just after the first reviews had started to appear in the film quarterlies and academic journals, a letter turned up in my mailbox. The envelope was larger and squarer than the ones commonly sold in stores, and because it was made of thick, expensive paper, my initial response was to think there might be a wedding invitation or a birth announcement inside. My name and address were written out across the front in an elegant, curling script. If the writing wasn’t that of a professional calligrapher, it no doubt came from someone who believed in the virtues of graceful penmanship, a person who had been schooled in the old academies of etiquette and social decorum. The stamp was postmarked Albuquerque, New Mexico, but the return address on the back flap showed that the letter had been written somewhere else—assuming that there was such a place, and assuming that the name of the town was real. Top and bottom, the two lines read: Blue Stone Ranch; Tierra del Sueño, New Mexico. I might have smiled when I saw those words, but I can’t remember now. No name was given, and as I opened the envelope to read the message on the card inside, I caught a faint smell of perfume, the subtlest hint of lavender essence.

    Dear Professor Zimmer, the note said. Hector has read your book and would like to meet you. Are you interested in paying us a visit? Yours sincerely, Frieda Spelling (Mrs. Hector Mann).

    I read it six or seven times. Then I put it down, walked to the other end of the room, and came back. When I picked up the letter again, I wasn’t sure if the words would still be there. Or, if they were there, if they would still be the same words. I read it six or seven more times, and then, still not sure of anything, dismissed it as a prank. A moment later, I was filled with doubts, and the next moment after that I began to doubt those doubts. To think one thought meant thinking the opposite thought, and no sooner did that second thought destroy the first thought than a third thought rose up to destroy the second. Not knowing what else to do, I got into my car and drove to the post office. Every address in America was listed in the zip code directory, and if Tierra del Sueño wasn’t there, I could throw away the card and forget all about it. But it was there. I found it in volume one on page 1933, sitting on the line between Tierra Amarilia and Tijeras, a proper town with a post office and its own five-digit number. That didn’t make the letter genuine, of course, but at least it gave it an air of credibility, and by the time I returned home, I knew that I would have to answer it. A letter like that can’t be ignored. Once you’ve read it, you know that if you don’t take the trouble to sit down and write back, you’ll go on thinking about it for the rest of your life.

    I haven’t kept a copy of my answer, but I remember that I wrote it by hand and tried to make it as short as possible, limiting what I said to just a few sentences. Without giving it much thought, I found myself adopting the flat, cryptic style of the letter I had received. I felt less exposed that way, less likely to be taken as a fool by the person who had masterminded the prank—if indeed it was a prank. Give or take a word or two, my response went something like this: Dear Frieda Spelling. Of course I would like to meet Hector Mann. But how can I be sure he’s alive? To the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t been seen in more than half a century. Please provide details. Respectfully yours, David Zimmer.

    We all want to believe in impossible things, I suppose, to persuade ourselves that miracles can happen. Considering that I was the author of the only book ever written on Hector Mann, it probably made sense that someone would think I’d jump at the chance to believe he was still alive. But I wasn’t in the mood to jump. Or at least I didn’t think I was. My book had been born out of a great sorrow, and now that the book was behind me, the sorrow was still there. Writing about comedy had been no more than a pretext, an odd form of medicine that I had swallowed every day for over a year on the off chance that it would dull the pain inside me. To some extent, it did. But Frieda Spelling (or whoever was posing as Frieda Spelling) couldn’t have known that. She couldn’t have known that on June 7, 1985, just one week short of my tenth wedding anniversary, my wife and two sons had been killed in a plane crash. She might have seen that the book was dedicated to them (For Helen, Todd, and Marco—In Memory), but those names couldn’t have meant anything to her, and even if she had guessed their importance to the author, she couldn’t have known that for him those names stood for everything that had any meaning in life—and that when the thirty-six-year-old Helen and the seven-year-old Todd and the four-year-old Marco had died, most of him had died along with them.

    They had been on their way to Milwaukee to visit Helen’s parents. I had stayed behind in Vermont to correct papers and hand in the final grades for the semester that had just ended. That was my work—professor of comparative literature at Hampton College in Hampton, Vermont—and I had to do it. Normally, we all would have gone together on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth, but Helen’s father had just been operated on for a tumor in his leg, and the family consensus was that she and the boys should leave as quickly as possible. This entailed some elaborate, last-minute negotiations with Todd’s school so that he would be allowed to miss the last two weeks of the second grade. The principal was reluctant but understanding, and in the end she gave in. That was one of the things I kept thinking about after the crash. If only she had turned us down, then Todd would have been forced to stay at home with me, and he wouldn’t have been dead. At least one of them would have been spared that way. At least one of them wouldn’t have fallen seven miles through the sky, and I wouldn’t have been left alone in a house that was supposed to have four people in it. There were other things, of course, other contingencies to brood about and torture myself with, and I never seemed to tire of walking down those same dead-end roads. Everything was part of it, every link in the chain of cause and effect was an essential piece of the horror—from the cancer in my father-in-law’s leg to the weather in the Midwest that week to the telephone number of the travel agent who had booked the airline tickets. Worst of all, there was my own insistence on driving them down to Boston so they could be on a direct flight. I hadn’t wanted them to leave from Burlington. That would have meant going to New York on an eighteen-seat prop plane to catch a connecting flight to Milwaukee, and I told Helen that I didn’t like those small planes. They were too dangerous, I said, and I couldn’t stand the idea of letting her and the boys go on one of them without me. So they didn’t—in order to appease my worries. They went on a bigger one, and the terrible thing about it was that I rushed to get them there. The traffic was heavy that morning, and when we finally got to Springfield and hit the Mass Pike, I had to drive well over the speed limit to make it to Logan in time.

    I remember very little of what happened to me that summer. For several months, I lived in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity, rarely stirring from the house, rarely bothering to eat or shave or change my clothes. Most of my colleagues were gone until the middle of August, and therefore I didn’t have to put up with many visits, to sit through the agonizing protocols of communal mourning. They meant well, of course, and whenever any of my friends came around, I always invited them in, but their tearful embraces and long, embarrassed silences didn’t help. It was better to be left alone, I found, better to gut out the days in the darkness of my own head. When I wasn’t drunk or sprawled out on the living room sofa watching television, I spent my time wandering around the house. I would visit the boys’ rooms and sit down on the floor, surrounding myself with their things. I wasn’t able to think about them directly or summon them up in any conscious way, but as I put together their puzzles and played with their Lego pieces, building ever more complex and baroque structures, I felt that I was temporarily inhabiting them again—carrying on their little phantom lives for them by repeating the gestures they had made when they still had bodies. I read through Todd’s fairy-tale books and organized his baseball cards. I classified Marco’s stuffed animals according to species, color, and size, changing the system every time I entered the room. Hours vanished in this way, whole days melted into oblivion, and when I couldn’t stomach it anymore, I would go back into the living room and pour myself another drink. On those rare nights when I didn’t pass out on the sofa, I usually slept in Todd’s bed. In my own bed, I always dreamed that Helen was with me, and every time I reached out to take hold of her, I would wake up with a sudden, violent lurch, my hands trembling and my lungs gasping for air, feeling as if I’d been about to drown. I couldn’t go into our bedroom after dark, but I spent a lot of time there during the day, standing inside Helen’s closet and touching her clothes, rearranging her jackets and sweaters, lifting her dresses off their hangers and spreading them out on the floor. Once, I put one of them on, and another time I got into her underwear and made up my face with her makeup. It was a deeply satisfying experience, but after some additional experimentation, I discovered that perfume was even more effective than lipstick and mascara. It seemed to bring her back more vividly, to evoke her presence for longer periods of time. As luck would have it, I had given her a fresh supply of Chanel No. 5 for her birthday in March. By limiting myself to small doses twice a day, I was able to make the bottle last until the end of the summer.

    I took a leave of absence for the fall semester, but rather than go away or look for psychological help, I stayed on in the house and continued to sink. By late September or early October, I was knocking off more than half a bottle of whiskey every night. It kept me from feeling too much, but at the same time it deprived me of any sense of the future, and when a man has nothing to look forward to, he might as well be dead. More than once, I caught myself in the middle of lengthy daydreams about sleeping pills and carbon monoxide gas. I never went far enough to take any action, but whenever I look back on those days now, I understand how close I came to it. The pills were in the medicine cabinet, and I had already taken the bottle off the shelf three or four times; I had already held the loose pills in my hand. If the situation had gone on much longer, I doubt that I would have had the strength to resist.

    That was how things stood for me when Hector Mann unexpectedly walked into my life. I had no idea who he was, had never even stumbled across a reference to his name, but one night just before the start of winter, when the trees had finally gone bare and the first snow was threatening to fall, I happened to see a clip from one of his old films on television, and it made me laugh. That might not sound important, but it was the first time I had laughed at anything since June, and when I felt that unexpected spasm rise up through my chest and begin to rattle around in my lungs, I understood that I hadn’t hit bottom yet, that there was still some piece of me that wanted to go on living. From start to finish, it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. As laughs go, it wasn’t especially loud or sustained, but it took me by surprise, and in that I didn’t struggle against it, and in that I didn’t feel ashamed of myself for having forgotten my unhappiness during those few moments when Hector Mann was on screen, I was forced to conclude that there was something inside me I had not previously imagined, something other than just pure death. I’m not talking about some vague intuition or sentimental yearning for what might have been. I had made an empirical discovery, and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof. If I had it in me to laugh, then that meant I wasn’t entirely numb. It meant that I hadn’t walled myself off from the world so thoroughly that nothing could get in anymore.

    It must have been a little past ten o’clock. I was anchored to my usual spot on the sofa, holding a glass of whiskey in one hand and the remote-control gadget in the other, mindlessly surfing channels. I came upon the program a few minutes after it started, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that it was a documentary about silent-film comedians. All the familiar faces were there—Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd—but they also included some rare footage of comics I had never heard of before, lesser-known figures such as John Bunny, Larry Semon, Lupino Lane, and Raymond Griffith. I followed the gags with a kind of measured detachment, not really paying attention to them, but absorbed enough not to switch to something else. Hector Mann didn’t come on until late in the program, and when he did, they showed only one clip: a two-minute sequence from The Teller’s Tale, which was set in a bank and featured Hector in the role of a hardworking assistant clerk. I can’t explain why it grabbed me, but there he was in his white tropical suit and his thin black mustache, standing at a table and counting out piles of money, and he worked with such furious efficiency, such lightning speed and manic concentration, that I couldn’t turn my eyes away from him. Upstairs, repairmen were installing new planks in the floor of the bank manager’s office. Across the room, a pretty secretary sat at her desk, buffing her nails behind a large typewriter. At first, it looked as though nothing could distract Hector from completing his task in record time. Then, ever so gradually, little streams of sawdust began to fall on his jacket, and not many seconds after that, he finally caught sight of the girl. One element had suddenly become three elements, and from that point on the action bounced among them in a triangular rhythm of work, vanity, and lust: the struggle to go on counting the money, the effort to protect his beloved suit, and the urge to make eye contact with the girl. Every now and then, Hector’s mustache would twitch in consternation, as if to punctuate the proceedings with a faint groan or mumbled aside. It wasn’t slapstick and anarchy so much as character and pace, a smoothly orchestrated mixture of objects, bodies, and minds. Each time Hector lost track of the count, he would have to start over again, and that only inspired him to work twice as fast as before. Each time he turned his head up to the ceiling to see where the dust was coming from, he would do it a split second after the workers had filled in the hole with a new plank. Each time he glanced over at the girl, she would be looking in the wrong direction. And yet, through it all, Hector somehow managed to keep his composure, refusing to allow these petty frustrations to thwart his purpose or puncture his good opinion of himself. It might not have been the most extraordinary bit of comedy I had ever seen, but it pulled me in until I was completely caught up in it, and by the second or third twitch of Hector’s mustache, I was laughing, actually laughing out loud.

    A narrator spoke over the action, but I was too immersed in the scene to catch everything he said. Something about Hector’s mysterious exit from the film business, I think, and the fact that he was considered to have been the last of the significant two-reel comedians. By the 1920s, the most successful and innovative clowns had already moved into full-length features, and the quality of short comic films had suffered a drastic decline. Hector Mann did not add anything new to the genre, the narrator said, but he was acknowledged as a talented gagman with exceptional body control, a notable latecomer who might have gone on to achieve important work if his career hadn’t ended so abruptly. At that point the scene ended, and I started listening more closely to the narrator’s comments. A succession of still photographs of several dozen comic actors rolled across the screen, and the voice lamented the loss of so many films from the silent era. Once sound entered the movies, silent films had been left to rot in vaults, had been destroyed by fires, had been carted away as trash, and hundreds of performances had disappeared forever. But all hope was not dead, the voice added. Old films occasionally turned up, and a number of remarkable discoveries had been made in recent years. Consider the case of Hector Mann, it said. Until 1981, only three of his films had been available anywhere in the world. Vestiges of the other nine were buried in an assortment of secondary materials—press reports, contemporary reviews, production stills, synopses—but the films themselves were presumed to be lost. Then, in December of that year, an anonymous package was delivered to the offices of the Cinematheque Française in Paris. Apparently mailed from somewhere in central Los Angeles, it contained a nearly pristine copy of Jumping Jacks, the seventh of Hector Mann’s twelve films. At irregular intervals over the next three years, eight similar packages were sent to major film archives around the world: the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the British Film Institute in London, Eastman House in Rochester, the American Film Institute in Washington, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, and again to the Cinematheque in Paris. By 1984, Hector Mann’s entire output had been dispersed among these six organizations. Each package had emanated from a different city, traveling from places as remote from one another as Cleveland and San Diego, Philadelphia and Austin, New Orleans and Seattle, and because there was never any letter or message included with the films, it was impossible to identify the donor or even to form a hypothesis about who he was or where he might have lived. Another mystery had been added to the life and career of the enigmatic Hector Mann, the narrator said, but a great service had been done, and the film community was grateful.

    I wasn’t attracted to mysteries or enigmas, but as I sat there watching the final credits of the program, it occurred to me that I might want to see those films. There were twelve of them scattered among six different cities in Europe and the United States, and in order to see them all, a person would have to give up a significant chunk of his time. No less than several weeks, I imagined, but perhaps as long as a month or a month and a half. At that point, the last thing I would have predicted was that I would wind up writing a book about Hector Mann. I was just looking for something to do, something to keep me occupied in a harmless sort of way until I was ready to return to work. I had spent close to half a year watching myself go to the dogs, and I knew that if I let it go on any longer, I was going to die. It didn’t matter what the project was or what I hoped to get out of it. Any choice would have been arbitrary by then, but that night an idea had presented itself to me, and on the strength of two minutes of film and one short laugh, I chose to wander around the world looking at silent comedies.

    I wasn’t a film person. I had started teaching literature as a graduate student in my mid-twenties, and since then all my work had been connected to books, language, the written word. I had translated a number of European poets (Lorca, Eluard, Leopardi, Michaux), had written reviews for magazines and newspapers, and had published two books of criticism. The first one, Voices in the War Zone, was a study of politics and literature that examined the work of Hamsun, Celine, and Pound in relation to their pro-Fascist activities during World War II. The second one, The Road to Abyssinia, was a book about writers who had given up writing, a meditation on silence. Rimbaud, Dashiell Hammett, Laura Riding, J. D. Salinger, and others—poets and novelists of uncommon brilliance who, for one reason or another, had stopped. When Helen and the boys were killed, I had been planning to write a new book about Stendhal. It wasn’t that I had anything against the movies, but they had never been very important to me, and not once in more than fifteen years of teaching and writing had I felt the urge to talk about them. I liked them in the way that everyone else did-as diversions, as animated wallpaper, as fluff. No matter how beautiful or hypnotic the images sometimes were, they never satisfied me as powerfully as words did. Too much was given, I felt, not enough was left to the viewer’s imagination, and the paradox was that the closer movies came to simulating reality, the worse they failed at representing the world—which is in us as much as it is around us. That was why I had always instinctively preferred black-and-white pictures to color pictures, silent films to talkies. Cinema was a visual language, a way of telling stories by projecting images onto a two-dimensional screen. The addition of sound and color had created the illusion of a third dimension, but at the same time it had robbed the images of their purity. They no longer had to do all the work, and instead of turning film into the perfect hybrid medium, the best of all possible worlds, sound and color had weakened the language they were supposed to enhance. That night, as I watched Hector and the other comedians go through their paces in my Vermont living room, it struck me that I was witnessing a dead art, a wholly defunct genre that would never be practiced again. And yet, for all the changes that had occurred since then, their work was as fresh and invigorating as it had been when it was first shown. That was because they had understood the language they were speaking. They had invented a syntax of the eye, a grammar of pure kinesis, and except for the costumes and the cars and the quaint furniture in the background, none of it could possibly grow old. It was thought translated into action, human will expressing itself through the human body, and therefore it was for all time. Most silent comedies hardly even bothered to tell stories. They were like poems, like the renderings of dreams, like some intricate choreography of the spirit, and because they were dead, they probably spoke more deeply to us now than they had to the audiences of their time. We watched them across a great chasm of forgetfulness, and the very things that separated them from us were in fact what made them so arresting: their muteness, their absence of color, their fitful, speeded-up rhythms. These were obstacles, and they made viewing difficult for us, but they also relieved the images of the burden of representation. They stood between us and the film, and therefore we no longer had to pretend that we were looking at the real world. The flat screen was the world, and it existed in two dimensions. The third dimension was in our head.

    There was nothing to stop me from packing my bags and leaving the next day. I was off for the semester, and the next term wouldn’t begin until the middle of January. I was free to do what I wanted, free to go wherever my legs wanted to take me, and the fact was that if I needed more time I could keep on going until I was past January, past September, past all the Septembers and Januarys for as long as I wished. Such were the ironies of my absurd and miserable life. The moment Helen and the boys were killed, I had been turned into a rich man. The first bit came from a life insurance policy that Helen and I had been talked into buying not long after I started teaching at Hampton—for peace of mind, the man said—and because it was attached to the college health plan and didn’t cost much, we had been paying in a small amount every month without bothering to think about it. I hadn’t even remembered that we owned this insurance when the plane went down, but less than a month later, a man showed up at my house and handed me a check for several hundred thousand dollars. A short time after that, the airline company made a settlement with the families of the victims, and as someone who had lost three people in the crash, I wound up winning the compensation jackpot, the giant booby prize for random death and unforeseen acts of God. Helen and I had always struggled to get by on my academic salary and the occasional fees she earned from freelance writing. At any point along the way, an extra thousand dollars would have made an enormous difference to us. Now I had that thousand many times over, and it didn’t mean a thing. When the checks came in, I sent half the money to Helen’s parents, but they sent it back by return mail, thanking me for the

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1