The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, the Locked Room (Contemporary American Fiction Series)

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Summary: Literature at its best
Review: This is by far the best book I've ever read, to begin with. Auster is a master in displaying his characters as live people, simply by giving them the thoughts, fears, and hopes everyone can understand. Additionally, he skilfully invents the most absurd events, but makes them plausible with a few words. Auster's style is fictional, fantastic, and descriptive in one. I've read all of his books, but this one is his masterpiece. It's the right book for everyone who feels and thinks the "New York way".

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Summary: Phenomenal, involving, profound and confusing
Review: Narratives spiralling out of track, characters involved in self-narratives that separate and congeal with the ostensible plot. An sneaking suspicion of dread behind you. Involving, teasing, playful and evil. Wonderful.

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Summary: someone should make a movie
Review: My first introduction to Auster was disguised behind celluloid in "The Music of Chance". I picked up on the name "Auster" later, when "Smoke and "Blue in the Face" were released. Several years after seeing Chance, I recognized the name Auster on a reduced price hardcover outside of a bookstore in LA (which is funny in itself), remembered the name from the dichotomous films of Smoke and Blue in the face (as I was impressed with them), and picked it up as an arbitrary deal. I eagerly read "Hand to Mouth" after discovering that the Auster had also written Chance. Returning to that same bookstore 6 months later (I am from Boston), feeling the urge to rediscover another Auster masterpiece, I randomly selected "The New York Trilogy"....... Hold while I'm speachless.............. Three works that question the darker side of what we wonder to be in all of us. It was as if the characters in the stories had silently known that they were being read and that they were using this to feed their solitude. I was staring at ultimate loneliness. And with no resolve of this self desolation, nothing to go back to, the search for happiness continued. It kept you going, reading, hoping to wind up at the end of a "White", "Blue", and "Red" trilogy........About New York Trilogy.....They should make movie(s) out of them......American needs more hopelessness.......

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Summary: The Watcher being watched
Review: Paul Auster tells us the story about what it feels choosing to be alone. His paragraphs write to the soul of who knows what it feels to be alienated. He doesn't blame that feeling on anyone else, that alienation comes from within ourselves. If you understand this feeling, you understand each of the books. This is not a detective story, as he painfully tells us in the first installment over and over again, this is an exploration of solitude. Not a noble solitude, although noble it might be in the end. But rather the solitude of being who you are, with the only choices being those choices made by your character. The watcher is always the watched, not by someone else, (although that is illluded to) but by the self. As fiction, that's pretty damn powerful.

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Summary: Honestly, I haven't quite finished it...
Review: Okay, so I'm only 30 pages into The City of Glass, but I just had to comment on the fact the the very first paragraph sent shivers down my spine. I'm enthralled.

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Summary: Fantastic book!
Review: For those of you working on solving some of the riddles of this book -- check out "Quinn's Book" by William Kennedy ("Ironweed"). The protagonist is -- that's right -- Daniel Quinn.

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Summary: Very good stories, too much complications
Review: I found the stories very intriguing and interesting, but I sometimes found myself jumping ahead when the thoughts became too complicated. I'm everything but a superficial reader, but still when I read I like having fun, not searching. That's why I'm glad "Moon Palace" and "The music of chance" are less speculative works. I liked them better. I'm a reader who speculates on Tom Clancy's books, can you imagine that? That's my personal view: I like writers who tell stories, and that's all.

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Summary: Oh, WOW!
Review: Congratulations -- you've just found a treasure. When my cousin, a voracious reader of excellent books, told me that this is currently her favorite book, of course I immediately bought it (through Amazon.com). I can see why she is so impressed. What an amazingly original work. It is sophisticated and writerly without being inscrutable or inaccessible. And what a creative book it is -- the best way I can describe it is that this book keeps jumping in and out of its own covers, sometimes right into the reader's own skull and then back again. I am amazed by Paul Auster's gift, and I hope to read all his other books -- although first I want to reread this one immediately. I feel certain that no matter how many times I read it, I will find new delights and insights each time.

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Summary: captivating for both mind and heart
Review: When I got married, I stopped reading after midnight. With this book, I renewed the tradition...

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Summary: Holy Christ
Review: This was the first in Paul Auster's oeuvre that I tackled and immediately after, I proceeded to read every single word that has come out of Mr. Auster's hand that I could get my hands on. Absolutely thrilling. In a complex world of merging and loss of identity, Mr. Auster effectily melts and combines the reader's identity with his characters. There is a point in THE LOCKED ROOM, towards the end when everything coalesces and when I got to it, I became, at once, so enlighted, so frightened, so impressed, and so scared that I almost had to vomit. This collection is so absolutely brilliant that I am without words. Mr. Auster took them all