#23 The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster (Faber and Faber Limited)

My intentions were good. I had a busy period at work coming up, and I gave some serious thought as to how I could best continue to read despite spending every waking minute at work.

Short stories were the answer, I thought. What better than to be able to dip in and out of some short stories for the 15 minutes or so spare time I had per day? And who better to read than Paul Auster, the author of two books I’ve already enjoyed this year? And finally, where better to start than his first critically acclaimed work, The New York Trilogy, which was recently republished as part of Faber and Faber’s 80th birthday celebrations.

The idea was good. It all made sense. Unfortunately, I really didn’t enjoy the first of the three novellas, City of Glass. Although just 133 pages long, and full of the questioning of reality and identity that is evident in his other works that I have read, I struggled to get into it and couldn’t manage beyond three pages at a time. Hence the paucity of recent blogs.

All three stories, City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room, are fundamentally detective stories, but are about as far from traditional detective stories as you can get. It’s been described as ‘mysteries about mysteries’, and that’s about as mysterious as you can get.

To illustrate the many confusing layers with which the mind has to cope in this series, City of Glass features two characters called Paul Auster (the author’s name), neither of which is the narrator, while the very first paragraph of Ghosts introduces the reader to confusing characters Blue, White, Black and Brown.

I was pleased I persevered, however, because the final story, The Locked Room, is the best and is really very interesting. It tells the tale of a writer who publishes the work of a childhood friend who has disappeared, and who goes on to take that man’s place in the world, in his family and his life. Given its length - it’s only 114 pages - it has more to say than most novels three or four times its size.

Which leaves me in a quandary regarding my rating. City of Glass would be 3/10, while The Locked Room deserves 9/10, so where does that leave The New York Trilogy as a whole?

So, rating time:

#23 The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster (Faber and Faber Limited) - 6/10

Next up: Mankind, by Mick Foley (Harper Collins)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating