Hello Charlie! 

Here is  my book review about the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I really liked this book and I wanted to share my enthousiasm with you!

So... Let's begin!!

«The question is the story itself, and whether or not it means something is not for the story to tell»

This quote from the trilogy illustrates it well, as each of the three novels has their own non-sens, moments where the reader needs to use his imagination and has to choose his own understanding of the story.

The New York Trilogy is a series of three detective and mistery's fiction written by Paul Auster.

The three novels bring out the topics of private eyes but mainly philosophical issues such as identity or the purpose of a life. Indeed, even if the three stories are about detectives, either the protagonist isn't a real one, either he isn't working on a real case.

«It was a wrong number that started it», indeed in the first novel «City of glass» the protagonist Daniel Quinn, a writer of detective stories, receives phone calls from a stranger who actually calls detective, Paul Auster.

Quinn decides to pretend to be Paul Auster and meets the man who calls him, Peter Stillman. He asks for the help of a private eye, fearing that his father who abused him when he was young and who has recently been released from prison will hurt or kill him. Quinn begins to live only through his fake identity «Paul Auster» and lose himself while he investigates.

The title of the novel can be read either as mirrors. With the help of mirrors, people People can see their faces and their personal appearances but they don't get to see their inner-self. Mirrors don't reflect the reality.

The second novel of the trilogy is «Ghost». In this novel, characters are named after colors instead of real names. The protagonist Blue is a real detective and is hire by White to watch Black for an inderterminate moment. Therefore Blue lives in a appartement cross Mr.Black's, he loses all contact from his real life, including his fiancée.

The days are all the same and Blue get tired of this routine, he feels trapped and began to think that Blue and Back are working together against him. Blue is trapped in his role and try to discover the truth.

«It seems to me now that Fanshawe was always there […] and without him I would hardly know who I am». In the last novel «The locked room» the narrator is Fanshawe's bestfriend, and we don't know his name. The story begins when the narrator receive a letter from Fanshawe's wife telling him that he diseappear and that he had left instructions in the case he will get lost.

The narrator comes to meet Fanshawe's wife and young son and learn that his bestfriend wants him to read the work he has written and to decide whether or not it has to be published.

Little by little, the narrator will replace Fanshawe and will begin to feel contradictory feelings toward Fanshawe and lose his notion of reality.

Throughout the trilogy, the characters and events seem to be connected to each other , indeed, some characters appears in the novel following, for example Quinn and Peter Stillman who are mentioned in «The locked room». Another connexion in the first novel is when Quinn has to follow Stillman (the father) and that he sees two of them and have to decide which one to watch.

The characters are in search of their identity and this theme is reveald by the fact that they are doubles of each others, Quinn and Auster in City of Glass, Blue and Black in Ghosts, Fanshawe and

the unnamed narrator in the last book. The fact that each character or narrator seems to mistake the reality and what they think they see, or seems themselves unsure about what is real leads the reader to question if the narrators are reliable. The reader is forced to use his imagination to find out what really happened and to find their own explanation.

I loved reading this trilogy because in addition to the suspense caused by the detective and mysterious stories, the question about identity and the subjectivity of an event, a story, to one are for me very interesting topics.A conclusion to these stories is that, like the narrator said, there is no final meaning and everything is possible, that «In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulgue nothing but their own lake of purpose».For me the questions identified in the book are very interesting and I think it is important for a person to think about.

Thank you for reading this book review! I hope you will look forward to read it!

If you already read the book (or not) and want to talk about it I will be happy to do so!

See you soon!