"[Paul] Auster''s deep understanding of his characters, soothing baritone, and skillful pacing...deliver an immensely satisfying experience overall for listeners"
-AudioFile Magazine
"An epic bildungsroman . . . . Original and complex . . . . It''s impossible not to be impressed - and even a little awed - by what Auster has accomplished. . . . A work of outsize ambition and remarkable craft,a monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contains multitudes."-Tom Perrotta, The New York Times Book Review
"A stunningly ambitious novel, and a pleasure to read. Auster''s writing is joyful even in the book''sdarkest moments, and never ponderous or showy. . . . An incredibly moving, true journey."-NPR
"Ingenious . . . . Structurally inventive and surprisingly moving. . . . 4 3 2 1 reads like [a] big social drama . . . while also offering the philosophical exploration of oneman''s fate."-Esquire
"Mesmerizing . . . Continues to push the narrative envelope. . . . Four distinct characters whose lives diverge and intersect in devious, rollicking ways, reminiscent of Kate Atkinson''s Life After Life. . . . Prismatic and rich in period detail, 4 3 2 1 reflects the high spirits of postwar America as well as the despair coiled, asplike, in its shadows."-O, the Oprah Magazine
"Sharply observed . . . . Reads like a sprawling, 19th-century novel."-The Wall Street Journal
"Ambitious and sprawling . . . . Immersive . . . . Auster has a startling ability to report the world in novel ways."-USA Today
"The power of [Auster''s] best work is . . . his faithful pursuit of the mission proposed in The Invention of Solitude, to explore the ''infinite possibilities of a limited space'' . . . . The effect [of 4 3 2 1] is almost cubist in its multidimensionality-that of a single, exceptionally variegated life displayed in the round. . . . [An] impressively ambitious novel."-Harper''s Magazine
"Auster''s magnificent new novel is reminiscent ofInvisible in that it deals with the impossibility of containing a lifein a single story . . . . Undeniably intriguing . . . . A mesmerizing chronicle of one character''s four lives . . . The finest-though one hopes, farfrom final-act in one of the mightiest writing careers of the last half century."-Paste Magazine
"Wonderfully clever . . . . 4 3 2 1 is much more than a pieceof literary gamesmanship . . . . It is a heartfeltand engaging piece of storytelling that unflinchingly explores the 20thcentury American experience in all its honor and ignominy. This is, withoutdoubt, Auster''s magnum opus. . . . A true revelation . . . One can''t help but admit they are in the presence of a genius."-Toronto Star
"A multitiered examination of the implications of fate . . . in which the structure of the book reminds us of its own conditionality. . . . A signifier of both possibility and its limitations."-The Washington Post
"At the heart of this novel is a provocative question: What would have happened if your life hadtaken a different turn at a critical moment? . . . Ingenious."-Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Auster presents four lovingly detailed portrayals ofthe intensity of youth - of awkwardness and frustration, but also of passion forbooks, films, sport, politics and sex. . . . [Trying] to think of comparisons [to the novel] . . . [nothing] is exactly right . . . . What he is driving at is not only the role of contingency and the unexpected, but the ''what-ifs'' that haunt us, the imaginary lives we hold in our minds that run parallel to our actual existence."-The Guardian
"Draws the reader in fromthe very first sentence and does not let go until the very end. . . . An absorbing, detailed account - four accounts! - of growing up in the decades following World War II. . . . Auster''sprose is never less than arresting .. . . In addition to being a bildungsroman, "4321" is a "künstlerroman," aportrait of the artist as a young man whose literary ambition is evident evenin childhood. . . . I emerged from . . . this prodigious book eager for more."-San Francisco Chronicle
"Leaves readers feeling they know every minute detail of [Ferguson''s] inner life, as if they were lifelong companions and daily confidants. . . . It''s like an epic game of MASH: Will Ferguson grow up in Montclair or Manhattan? Excel in baseball or basketball? Date girls or love boys too? Live or die? . . . A detailed landscape . . . for readers who like taking the scenic route."-TIME Magazine
"Auster pays tribute to what Rose Ferguson thinks of as a ''dear, dirty, devouring New York, the capital of human faces, the horizontal Babel of human tongues.''. . . Sprawling . . . occasionally splendid."-The New Yorker
"A bona fide epic . . . both accessible and formally daring."-Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Inventive, engrossing."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Arresting .. . . A hugely accomplished work, a novel unlike any other."-The National (UAE)
"Brilliantly rendered,intricately plotted . . . a magnum opus."-Columbia Magazine
"Auster''s first novel inseven years is . . . . an ingenious move . . . . Auster''s sense of possibility, his understanding of what all his Fergusons have in common, with us and one another, is a kind of quiet intensity, a striving to discover who they are. . . . [He] reminds us that not just life, but also narrative is always conditional, that it only appears inevitable after the fact."-Kirkus (starred review)
"Auster has been turning readers'' heads for three decades, bending the conventions of storytelling . . . . He now presents his most capacious, demanding, eventful, suspenseful, erotic, structurally audacious, funny, and soulful novel to date . . . [a] ravishing opus."-Booklist (starred review)
"Rich and detailed. It''s about accidents of fate, and the people and works of art and experiences that shape our lives even before our birth-what reader doesn''t vibrate at that frequency?"-Lydia Kiesling, Slate
"Auster illuminates how the discrete moments in one''s life form the plot points of a sprawling narrative, rife with possibility."-Library Journal (starred review)
"Mesmerizing . . . . A wonderful work of realist fiction and well worth the time."-Read it Forward
"Frisky and sinuous . . . energetic. . . . A portrait of a cultural era coming into being . . . the era that is our own."-Tablet magazine
"Almost everything about Auster''s new novel is big. . . Satisfyingly rich in detail . . . . A significant and immersive entry to a genre that stretches back centuriesand includes Augie March and Tristram Shandy."-Publishers Weekly
