"What was a poor dog to do?": This story of contemporary America--from the poet- wanderer's life on the streets to the world of "two-car garages, home-improvement loans, and neo-Renaissance shopping malls"--is told from the point of view of a "four-leg", Mr. Bones. Following his critically acclaimed The New York Trilogy and The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster's new novel is a sad and witty saga of a dog's life. With the imminent demise of his first master, Willy G. Christmas--on his way to "Timbuktu"--Mr Bones faces an uncertain future as a "lost" dog, an ownerless dog, a homeless dog. Timbuktu is a tale of what happens, before and after Willy's death: the dilemmas of ethics and affection, of a man and a dog in search of love and friendship. In Mr Bones' dreams, Willy comes back, exhorting, advising, allegorising: "People get treated like dogs, too, my friend, and sometimes they have to sleep in barns and meadows because there's nowhere else for them to go." Like Mom-san, Willy's mother, "hunted ... down like a dog" in Warsaw. The connection is crucial to the novel; its sustained, but discreet, reflection on the vicissitudes of human--and canine--love and hate. --Vicky Lebeau