This book was recommended to me by a dear friend of mine a while ago. I’ve often seen other books by the same author on the shelves and they seemed quite popular, so I reckoned he was at least a decent writer. Turns out he is far better than “a decent writer;” one sentence in and I was hooked.
Mr. Vertigo tells the story of Walt Rawley, an orphaned boy living with his neglectful aunt and uncle in Saint Louis, and how his life was changed when a man who calls himself Master Yehudi took him away and told him he would teach him how to fly. When I read the synopsis at the back of the book I thought to myself that this would be a fun and easy book to read; but boy, was I wrong! Walt’s story is not, by any means, a walk in the park; it is nothing short of a blitz attack on the reader’s emotions. It tracks one disaster after the other and just when you think all is well, things go downhill again.
Because of realistic setting of the story I found myself completely believing everything I read, that Walt the Wonder Boy is in fact real and that people with “the gift” can learn how to fly. People say that great books transport you from your own world to a whole new one - well, this book did not do that. It took the world I already live in and changed the way I see it. Needless to say it takes a great amount of skill on the author’s part to make the reader fully believe everything he says without a doubt and that alone made me fall in love with the writings of Paul Auster.
I highly recommend reading this book. It is quite short and incredibly entertaining and, quite honestly, one of the best books I’ve read in a while. I’d give it 4.5/5.