InQ Episode 83: "The New York Trilogy"

If you think you are embarking in a simple detective story, think again! The New York trilogy will take you deeper and further than any other “noir” novel you have read thus far. Composed of three stand alone novellas, the reader soon realizes they all share common threads, if not common characters. Touching on broad themes like identity, narrative creation, what constitutes a writer, solitude, obsession, the blurred lined between fiction and reality, and between sanity and insanity, The New York trilogy cannot leave its reader indifferent. Purposefully written to provide a mirror for its reader, the New York trilogy cannot but leave the reader pondering, shaken and forever altered. Brilliant, it is not however to be put in everyone’s hands. A reader with some knowledge of narratology, meta-fiction, deconstruction and post-modernity may be better equipped to swim in the dark and muddy waters of Paul Auster’s fascinating creation.