Got halfway through and put it aside. Admiration for skill in storytelling high, reading enjoyment low. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyed these three books. Not sure about the whole trilogy concept though. Most Auster's books have the same story: an author follows a few strange paths and ends up on some wild adventure. Not only did all 3 books in the trilogy have this same plot structure, Leviathan and The Brooklyn Follies did too.
Still, there is something unique and charmingly about the prose and journeys. Definitely one of my favourite authors. ( )

The New York Trilogy (2006) by Paul Auster. I confess, I didn’t really get this book, or I should say collection of books. The trilogy of the title refers to the three short novels (when does a short novel become a novella?) City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room. While those works were published in 1985 and 1986, the deluxe edition with an added introduction was published by Penguin Classics in 2006.
Having the three stories together makes them an easier read in that you don’t have to search out individual copies of each. But together they present a trio of convoluted detective tales set in New York City. I’m not going to go into too many details of the separate tales, but give an over view as to the response I had to them.
Reading one story after another left me with the feeling I had just experienced a fever dream come to life. Characters from one story drifted through the other two while people fall into unpolished “ghosts” of themselves. I had the sense that there was no sense to the stories, just an experience of them, of losing yourself while always trying to maintain just who you are. At times I felt the person being followed or spied upon just might be me.
At the completion of reading the three I felt hollow for some reason, knowing full well that I probably didn’t grasp the meaning of any of the work, but also feeling as if there were no meaning to be found. Perhaps Ghosts best portrayed the abyss that my sense of self had fallen into, while City of Glass reflected my sense of never being able to see the big picture, even as it unraveled about me in real life. The Locked Room had me checking the cellar door, making certain there was nothing, no shadow of a being, slowly ascending the stairs, remaining unseen but not unheard.
Or maybe I just didn’t understand what the author was going for. If he was trying to hold an ancient looking glass up to the reader and daring to peek at we have become, I think he succeeded.
But again, I’m only guessing. ( )

Pretentious, boring, pointless. ( )

If you're a fan of the old television show The Twilight Zone, then Auster's The New York Trilogy is something you'll probably enjoy. There was just something so fascinating yet strangely weird about all three of these stories that while I was reading them, I simply couldn't stop thinking that they would be perfect for The Twilight Zone. ( )