I’ve read quite a few of Auster’s books now but Brooklyn Follies is still my favourite one. I was looking forward to reading The New York Trilogy so much, maybe too much, because it didn’t come up to my expectations. It was first published in 1985.

The three novellas which make up the trilogy City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room are really the same story retold differently each time and none of them work, for me anyway. There are really no likeable characters which is always a mistake and I found the paranoia and madness involved in the stories to be uncomfortable reading which led to nothing really.

There are plenty of nods in the direction of writers whom Auster presumably admires but I would categorize the whole thing as Smarty-Arty-Farty, which is often just tedious but some people really go for that sort of stuff. I’m just glad that this wasn’t the first Auster book which I read because I probably wouldn’t have gone on to read any others.