Dark, hollow and introspective!
If you haven’t heard the name Paul Auster before, you will know it well by the end of the book. Featuring as one of the characters in this trilogy of stories about identity, Paul weaves a web of intrigue, emptiness and self examination. The New York Trilogy is a collection of stories that were originally published individually; City of Glass in 1985, along with Ghosts and The Locked Room from 1986. Though they are separate stories, there is a distinct connection between all three and seeming interrelations that you could fixate on if you let them become real.
However, The New York Trilogy is best when read as a thriller, the area in which it is strongest. Just when you think your attention is about to wane, Auster pulls you back in with perfectly placed revelations, and while the revelations often lead nowhere you’re always building and hoping for the final discovery that will complete the puzzle.
The stories weave their way around New York City as a series of cat and mouse altercations in which the lines of who is which are completely blurred. The biggest weave throughout them all is the level of introspection that Auster brings to the surreal stories. Self analysis and the concept of turning the mirror on yourself are critical to everything and you become embroiled in the psyche of the author, twisting with his hollow high impression of his own intelligence, his obsession with loneliness and with being on your own and his admiration for writers in general, all which he cleverly deconstructs through the characters of the trilogy.
Despite its darkness, The New York Trilogy is an enjoyable read that will keep you guessing right up to the end and beyond. Strong dialogue and characters combine with Paul Auster’s absorbing plots giving you much to ponder and creating a gripping series of post-modern detection fiction novellas.
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy review: 4/5
