| |
| | The New York Trilogy |
 | | Connecting themes explored from different perspectives run through the trilogy, themes which include the nature of writers and of writing and the need, or otherwise, to supply a story; of identity; of observation and filtering life through the perceived observations of others. |
 | | There is an unpleasant fixation on early death, of fathers mourning their young sons (something which cropped up in Auster's wife's novel, 'What I Loved', too, and which seems a subject never far from his work), and there are a plethora of red notebooks, disappearances, locked/unlocked doors and unanswered telephones. |
 | | The author is in firm control, prompting in his characters an automatic reassessing of expectation, a tweaking or fine-tuning of anticipation in accordance with the presentation of new facts or awareness, and this is echoed in the mind of the reader as the effects, or possibility of change, or reaction are explored. |
| www.btinternet.com /~edandmill/reviews/newyorktrilogy.htm (636 words) |
|