Winter Journal is a memoir, and a companion piece to The Invention of Solitude. It is in part about the death of his mother in 2002, just as the previous book was in part about the death of his father over 30 years before. It's an extraordinarily intimate book, despite being written in the second person, and will resonate with anyone who thinks deeply about the passing of years, and the events that accumulate during a life: love and sex, death and marriage, loss, eating, moving house, pleasure, pain. I think even if you haven't read Auster before, or even if you've tried the fiction and not been that impressed, this is worth a go. A mighty powerful book.