Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- An old man called Mr. Blank sits alone in a room whose contents are labeled TABLE, LAMP and so on, as if to help him remember.
He doesn t know where he is or how he got there, though he So opens Paul Auster s new novel, ``Travels in the Scriptorium, a metaphysical puzzle that intrigues and perplexes by turns.
The room is fitted with microphones and cameras, whose single day in Mr. Blank s life, during which he tries to piece together his own story, helped by visits from a string of troublingly familiar people.
That sense of deja vu will nag at Auster fans, too, as these characters have strayed from the pages of his earlier novels. Here come Auggie Wren, Daniel Quinn and Anna Blume.
When Mr.
Blank finally takes a closer look at the manuscript on the desk, it turns out to be the work of none other than N.R. Fanshawe, the writer who vanishes in Auster s ``New York Trilogy.
Inevitably, the manuscript is titled ``Travels in the Scriptorium ; it describes an old man sitting alone in a room.
The novel s closing pages seem to suggest that Mr. Blank is of character to first-degree murder.
Canny though it is, this deceptively slim meta-fiction smacks of self-indulgence.
The book is published by Holt in the U.S.
and Faber in the U.K. (160 pages, $22; 12.
99 pounds).
Alice Hoffman is the master of darkly grownup fairy tales, and her latest, ``Skylight Confessions, features ghosts, folklore and a house known as the Glass Slipper.
she nurses her father through his final illness.
Standing on the porch after his funeral, she vows to make her future with the next man who crosses her path. Enter Yale student John Moody.
A freckled girl with a shock of red hair, Arlyn pursues John, a chilly ``man of reason.
They marry, moving into his parents Connecticut house, a marvel made of glass and steel. It s not until John proves unable to love their son, Sam, that she realizes her marriage was a terrible mistake.
To atone, she puts Sam before all else.
When the boy turns six, she is diagnosed with advanced cancer and dies. This being Hoffman, Arlyn returns as a specter to haunt her callous husband.
By the time Meredith Weiss enters their lives, Sam has grown Meredith, an overqualified nanny adrift in her late 20s, has ghosts of her own.
She makes it her mission to rescue Sam.
Like the Glass Slipper, Hoffman s fairy tales have a steel core. This latest insists that the doomed cannot be saved.
The magic lies in her ability to pry solace from unsugared truths. The book is from Little, Brown in the U.S.
and Chatto Windus in Britain. (272 pages, $24.99; 12.
99 pounds).
There s nothing otherworldly about Ryu Murakami s new novel, ``Piercing, which traces the legacy of child abuse through the lives of adults.
The story is set in Tokyo, where Kawashima Masayuki, a successful graphic designer, has just become a father.
His wife gives baking classes from home, and their small apartment is fragrant with bread fresh from the oven. Yet all is not well.
Each night, Kawashima slips from his bed and stands over their baby daughter with an ice pick in his hand, apparently trying to prove to himself that he d never stab her.
It s not an irrational fear, since years before he plunged an ice pick into a girlfriend s stomach. Seized by dread, he decides This time, he must kill her to avoid being caught.
gore.
Unfortunately, his characters aren t sufficiently developed to make you care much about their fate.
``Piercing is published by Penguin in the U.S.
and Bloomsbury in the U.K. (192 pages, $13; 10 pounds).
(Hephzibah Anderson is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.
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