Entry tags:
Book Review: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Title: The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room
Author: Paul Auster
Published: New York: Penguin Books, 1990 (1985, 1986, and 1986)
Page Count: 371 (158, 74, 139)
Total Page Count: 18,083
Text Number: 51-53
Read For: My own enjoyment
Short review: The New York Trilogy is composed of three seemingly unconnected texts, all of which involve writing, notebooks, detective cases, and New York City. In City of Glass, Quinn, a detective-story novelist, becomes a detective himself and is wrapped up in a bizarre case about language. In Ghosts, Blue is a private eye hired by Black to monitor and report on White. For a year he watches White, and Blue's own life dissolves in the process. In The Locked Room, the narrator's childhood friend Fanshawe disappears, leaving behind a family and a closet of manuscripts. As the narrator sorts thought the manuscripts for publication, he becomes increasingly obsessed with Fanshawe's life, disappearance, and death. As a trilogy, the stories are entirely unconnected save for the themes of language, writing, notebooks, and investigation that carry through them all. The end result is a slew of unsolved mysteries that, as Auster often does, tantalize and lead on the reader without providing satisfying conclusions. The ideas are interesting, the texts read quickly, but they are ultimately unsatisfying, the questions are never answered, and they promise more than they ever deliver.
( Long review. )
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
Author: Paul Auster
Published: New York: Penguin Books, 1990 (1985, 1986, and 1986)
Page Count: 371 (158, 74, 139)
Total Page Count: 18,083
Text Number: 51-53
Read For: My own enjoyment
Short review: The New York Trilogy is composed of three seemingly unconnected texts, all of which involve writing, notebooks, detective cases, and New York City. In City of Glass, Quinn, a detective-story novelist, becomes a detective himself and is wrapped up in a bizarre case about language. In Ghosts, Blue is a private eye hired by Black to monitor and report on White. For a year he watches White, and Blue's own life dissolves in the process. In The Locked Room, the narrator's childhood friend Fanshawe disappears, leaving behind a family and a closet of manuscripts. As the narrator sorts thought the manuscripts for publication, he becomes increasingly obsessed with Fanshawe's life, disappearance, and death. As a trilogy, the stories are entirely unconnected save for the themes of language, writing, notebooks, and investigation that carry through them all. The end result is a slew of unsolved mysteries that, as Auster often does, tantalize and lead on the reader without providing satisfying conclusions. The ideas are interesting, the texts read quickly, but they are ultimately unsatisfying, the questions are never answered, and they promise more than they ever deliver.
( Long review. )
Review posted here at Amazon.com.