The Locked Room

New York Trilogy #3

by Paul Auster

When Fanshawe disappears, leaving behind a wife, a baby and an extraordinary cache of novels, plays and poems, his boyhood friend is lured obsessively into the life that Fanshawe left behind.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Literature, American, 20th Century, Novels, The United States Of America

179 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Report from the Interior, Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, the Prix Médicis Étranger, the Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Locked Room is a book of a substitute or of a changeling if you wish.
A man occupies the place that doesn’t belong to him…

In general, lives seem to veer abruptly from one thing to another, to jostle and bump, to squirm. A person heads in one direction, turns sharply in mid-course, stalls, drifts, starts up again. Nothing is ever known, and inevitably we come to a place quite different from the one we set out for.

I believe everyone has one’s own Heart of Darkness place where one must go to meet one’s dark alter ego or one’s adversarial ego to fight it and win… or be defeated.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It seems to me now that Fanshawe was always there. He is the place where everything begins for me, and without him I would hardly know who I am.” So begins The Locked Room, Paul Auster’s final novel in his New York Trilogy (City of Glass is Volume 1 and Ghosts is Volume 2) wherein an unnamed first person narrator tells the tale using the simple, straightforward language of detective fiction. In this way, the novel makes for easy peasy, enjoyable reading.

But underneath this hard-boiled linguistic skin, oh my goodness, we encounter the narrator, a writer by profession, navigating the choppy waters of passion and commitment, forever brooding on an entire range of topics: life and death, self and other, childhood and memory, friendship and fatherhood, love and hate, reading and writing, self-definition and self-identity.

In a strange, offbeat way, all the philosophic reflections and ruminations give Auster’s short novel an irresistible drive. Fanshawe was a writer, leaving boxes of novels, journals, poetry and plays to be read and judged. Fanshawe also leaves his beautiful wife, Sophie, and his baby boy. Sophie contacts the narrator, who was Fanshawe’s dearest friend, to do the reading and judging. To tell more than these few facts would be to tell too much. Let me simply say that once I started reading The Locked Room, I couldn’t put it down.


American author Paul Auster, born 1947

[Ahmad Sharabiani · Rating 4 out of 5]

219. The Locked Room (The New York Trilogy, #3), Paul Auster
The New York Trilogy is a series of novels by Paul Auster. Originally published sequentially as City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986), it has since been collected into a single volume.
The Locked Room is the story of a writer who lacks the creativity to produce fiction. Fanshawe, his childhood friend, has produced creative work, and when he disappears the writer publishes his work and replaces him in his family. The title is a reference to a "locked room mystery", a popular form of early detective fiction.
سه گانه نیویورک: شهرِ شیشه ای، ارواح، اتاق دربسته، نویسنده: پل استر (اوستر)، نشر (افق) ادبیات، تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه نوامبر سال 2010 میلادی
عنوان: اتاق در بسته؛ نویسنده: پل آستر؛ مترجم: شهرزاد لولاچی؛ تهران، افق، 1383؛ در 175 ص؛ شابک: ایکس - 964369156؛ چاپ دوم 1385؛ سوم 1387؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 20 م
سه گانه ی نیویورک، سری سه رمان، از نویسنده ی پست مدرن آمریکایی: پل استر است. این سه رمان، که هر کدام داستان جنایی و شخصیت‌های داستانی مجزایی از هم دارند، تنها به سبب مکان مشترک رخدادها، سه گانه را تشکیل داده اند. عنوانهای این سه رمان: «شهر شیشه ای»، «ارواح»، و «اتاق دربسته» هستند. در اتاق در بسته: «فنشاو» ناپدید شده، و از ایشان چند داستان، شعر و نمایشنامه، بر جای مانده است. راوی داستان که دوست دیرین فنشاو است، بر اساس وصیت دوست پیشین خویش، باید دستنوشته های فنشاو را چاپ کند. ادامه را خود بخوانید. ا. شربیانی

[Mohammad Ali Shamekhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

شک دارم که بهش دو و نیم ستاره بدم یا همین سه تا خوبه؛ چون به نظرم حضور پررنگ و پررنگ تر فنشاو در زندگی شخصیت اصلی اونجوری که باید توجیه نشده بود؛ یه اغراقی بود در احساساتش نسبت به فنشاو

پل استر در اواخر کتاب در مورد سه گانه ی نیویورک حرفی می زنه که من متوجه منظورش نمی شم و امیدوارم نقدی چیزی این بیان استر رو روشن کنه. استر می گه

The entire story comes down to what happened at the end, and without that end inside me now, I could not have started this book. The same holds for the two books that come before it, City of Glass and Ghosts. These three stories are finally the same story, but each one represents a different stage in my awareness of what it is about

به طور خاص منظورم جمله ی آخره - اینکه این داستان ها مراحل مختلف آگاهی نویسنده ان

* ترجمه

ترجمه شهرزاد لولاچی همونطور که ذیل کتاب اول سه گانه ی نیویورک یعنی شهر شیشه ای گفته بودم بی ایراد نیست اما ایراداش با یه ویرایش درست می شن و ریشه ای نیستن. اما به هر حال باید مواظب بود. مثلا یکی از جاهایی که لولاچی کلا گیج زده در ترجمه ی این عبارته

I liked names associated with the sky - Orville Wright, Amelia Earhart - , with silent humor - Keaton, Langdon, Lloyd - , with long homeruns - Killebrew, Mantle, Mays - , and with music - Schubert, Ives, Armstrong

مترجم اینجوری ترجمه کرده

به خصوص از اسم هایی که آسمان را تداعی می کردند خوشم می آمد - اورویل، رایت، آملیا ارهارت - ، آنهایی که طنزی درشان پنهان بود - کیتن، لنگدون، لوید - ، اسامی اشیای موجود در خانه - کیل برو، منتل، میز - و آن ها که آهنگین بودند -شوبرت، ایوز، آرمسترانگ

اگر مترجم کمی درباره این اسامی جستجو می کرد - در حد یک گوگل - و بیشتر به دیکشنری نگاه می کرد، چنین اشتباهات فاحشی رو مرتکب نمی شد. نویسنده از اسامی ای"که طنزی درشان پنهان" است سخن نمی گوید بلکه از اسامی کمدین های سینمای صامت حرف می زند؛ از "اسامی اشیای موجود در خانه" سخنی نمی گوید بلکه از اسامی بازیکنان بیسبال حرف می زند - هومران از اصطلاحات تخصصی بیسبال است و ربطی به وسایل خانه ندارد؛ و در نهایت صحبتی از اسامی آهنگین نیست بلکه منظور او اسامی کسانی است که با موسیقی سروکار دارند

[Joshua Gonsalves · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me much longer to read this than necessary. For a few reasons probably. But they're all irrelevant now. What is done is done, and my reading of this book is done.
The Locked Room is the final installment of Paul Auster's brilliant metafictional postmodern mess of tragic and unique subversive-by-design mystery tales known as The New York Trilogy. It is a really short book, but ir has a lot in it for you to take in, but at the same time it doesn't really. Fitting for this series of novels, this final chapter pieces together a few parts of Paul's puzzling drama, but then decides to leave things intentionally murky by the end. It very much reflects the first installment of the trilogy (which I, admittedly, still believe to be by far the best entry), there are not only some references to it, whether they be direct or indirect, but some moments and themes which directly mirror it. The relationships are somewhat similair, except this one is told from a slightly alternate perspective. This is told from the guy who gets the better end of the deal...only to make the novel feel even more tragic in the end. Somehow.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh God, my brain...

[Farnoosh Farahbakht · Rating 3 out of 5]

اتاق دربسته سومین قسمت از معروفترین اثر "پل استر" یعنی "سه گانه نیویورک" است.کتاب ماهیت معمایی دارد و بیشتر حول شخصیت دو نفر است. "فنشاو" که شخصیتی بسیار پیچیده و مرموز دارد و در ابتدای کتاب می خوانیم که ناپدید شده است و از او چند داستان و شعر و نمایشنامه به جا مانده و راوی داستان که دوست قدیمی "فنشاو" است و با وجود چندین سال عدم ارتباط طبق وصیتش مامور می شود تا دست نوشته های او را به چاپ برساند. در ابتدای کتاب این حس را پیدا کردم که با یک کتاب کاراگاهی سر و کار دارم اما کم کم جستجوهای راوی برای پیدا کردن "فنشاو" به جستجو برای شناخت هویتش که به این دوست قدیمی گره خورده بود تبدیل شد.و در آخراینکه برای داشتن تصویر بهتری از دنیای "استر" حتما باید سراغ دو کتاب قبلی "سه گانه نیویورک" یعنی "شهر شیشه ای" و "ارواح" برم

[Carolina Quintero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cada vez que uno lee algo de Paul Auster descubre que su intención siempre será generar un sin sabor en sus historias, que aparentemente quedan inconclusas pero que en realidad cada final queda abierto a lo que el lector quiera interpretar, a que seamos nosotros mismos quienes le demos el desenlace que queramos a cada libro, creo fielmente que todas absolutamente todas las obras de Auster se conectan entre sí. No tiene pierde este escritor cuando logras entender qué es lo que pretende.

[mona aghazade · Rating 4 out of 5]

باید بگم قبل این کتاب با پل آستر زیاد آشنا نبودم اما تو این کتاب از نثرش خوشم اومد
من این کتاب و به صورت صوتی و تو مسیر گوش دادم و لذت بردم
اگه 5 ندادم به این علت بود که آستر تو شخصیت فنشاو خیلی اغراق کرده بود - به صورت عامیانه بگم - یه بتی از فنشاو ساخته بود
ولی خوب بی انصافیه بگم که خوب نبود

[Bob Redmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third volume in Auster's New York Trilogy, like the two that preceded it, explores the same thematic ground--self and other, authorship and audience, truth and fiction--with the same fusion of pot-boiler crime novel and philosophical essay.

The plot in this one involves a prodigiously talented writer and his boyhood friend, a critic. The writer disappears and a narrative tango ensues--not just involving characters and plot points within THE LOCKED ROOM, but with reference and motifs from the previous volumes. Towards the end of the book, the narrator references those books by name and his intentions writing them: (p. 149) "These three stories are finally the same story, but each one represents a different stage in my awareness of what it is about… the story is not in the words; it's in the struggle."

Rather that create a grand concluding statement, then, THE LOCKED room twists, like the spiral of a conch shell, towards what Calvino calls "the ocean of the unsayable." One highlight along the way is Chapter 5, in which Auster--still a younger novelist (he was 39; the Trilogy was his first major fictional work)--writes passionately about making up stories vs. telling true ones. He tells several "strange but true" tales, such as the one in which Russian writer Bakhtin, in hiding during WWII, used his manuscript to roll tobacco, rather than go without smoking. One cannot help imagine a grad-student version of Auster discovering and collecting these stories until he might use them in a novel one day.

In some later books Auster's apparent enthusiasm would wane, and his storytelling become repetitive. Here, however, despite the existential angst of some of his characters, the struggles to discover an authentic voice, to tell and end a story, are a pleasurable pain and an ultimately life-affirming invitation.

*

WHY I READ THIS BOOK: Through a series of chance happenings, I was moved to re-read the series of books. See the review for CITY OF GLASS for details.

[merixien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kırmızı Defter’i okumamak gibi bir ihtimal yok artık.

[Keith Bruton · Rating 3 out of 5]

My least favourite of the three. Too slow for me. It could have been so much better but fell flat.

[Irmak · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Leo Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

People love Auster's New York Trilogy. I can see why... they are all about losing your way while trying to discover the CAPITAL 'T' Truth. Better still, Auster wrote the screenplay to one of my favorite movies, "Smoke." Which was warm and quirky, edgy and yet... conventional.

Sort of like "American Splendor" ... real life told slant.

Oddly, I disliked the first two novels of the trilogy. They were novels tracing detached, monk-like people through some very odd plots. Starting in relatively realistic "life," these books traced people's descents into intellectual obsession and madness. The problem was that there was nothing "to" the protagonists in those books. They were empty facades who drifted, without motivation or visceral reaction, from event to event.


So I did not come to "The Locked Room" expecting much. But this is the most realized of the three novels. In it, the protagonist, while still detached and monkish, is deeply connected to reality -- which saves him from going over the deep-end. He marries, and has children. And while this narrator begins to "fall into the void" like Auster's protagonists in the first two novels (Quinn and Blue), his attachments rescue him.

Still, I cannot help but say that the entire trilogy disappointed me. I found the overall sense more like reading a logic puzzle than meeting characters in a novel. And while the ideas Auster plays with are fun -- the difference between a text about reality and the reality itself, and how we maintain identities in ambiguous situations -- the way Auster tries to pull this off did not engage my heart.

But that's just me. And as always when you dislike any well-regarded book, it may highlight gaps in myself more than gaps in the book. (As a confession, I have read "Moby Dick" three times since I disliked the book... to question my own reaction. And I still do not like it...)

On the up-side, Auster writes clean, precise, easy-to-read prose. He's even more lean than Hemingway in my opinion. You can zip through these books in an afternoon. I would recommend it to people who like thought-provoking, philosophic fiction. And remember -- my negative voice is the dissenting opinion. Since most well-read critics love Auster and his trilogy more than I.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) While most of the New York Trilogy is told in the third person, this is a first-person narrative that seems to pick up where City of Glass left off. It begins in 1977, when the unnamed narrator gets a letter from Sophie Fanshawe, the wife of his childhood best friend, telling him that Fanshawe disappeared six months ago, and despite the best efforts of the detective Quinn (the main character in CoG; the narrator also later encounters Peter Stillman on a trip to Paris), no trace of him can be found. The narrator has been named Fanshawe’s literary executor and takes it upon himself to get the man’s unpublished work out into the world: plays are produced, novels are published. He also starts writing a biography of the friend he always envied. It’s more like he’s becoming Fanshawe, especially when he marries Sophie. Doubling has been a big theme of the trilogy, and here the metaphorical kill-or-be-killed situation seems to turn literal at the conclusion, which I didn’t particularly understand.

The metafictional element of this novel is that Fanshawe’s early life is a lot like Paul Auster’s as revealed in Winter Journal, while Sophie’s resembles his wife Siri Hustvedt’s (and the author pair would later name their daughter Sophie). Ghosts added nothing for me; nor did this one particularly. You could easily stop after City of Glass. For the trilogy as a whole it’s 3.5*.

[Yasmine Alishzadeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

صرفا یک کتاب جالب. با نخواندن این کتاب چیزی از دست نمی دهید.

[Comfortably · Rating 5 out of 5]

Οι οστερικοι ηρωες, εξοριστοι μεσα στο ιδιο τους το σωμα, με τις υπαρξιακες τους ανησυχιες να κρυβονται πισω απο τις λεξεις κ τη δεξιοτεχνικη γραφη του Οστερ. Μια διαδρομη στα δαιδαλωδη μονοπατια του ανθρωπινου υποσυνειδητου. Αν θελεις να καταδυθεις.

[Hojaplateada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Está muy bueno. Explica cosas de los libros anteriores. Yo creí que eran independientes, pero no, hay que leer los tres y en orden

[Zeliha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Üçlemenin ilk iki kitabını okuyalı çok uzun zaman olduğu için kurgusal olarak da bağlantılı olmadığından Kilitli Oda’yı da bitirip üçlemeyi rafa kaldırmaya niyetlendim ama düşündüğüm gibi olmadı. Kitabın sonu öyle bir noktada bitiyor ki yazarın üçlemeden sonra yazdığı Kırmızı Defteri mi okusam yoksa ilk iki kitabı tekrar okuyup sonra mı Kırmızı Deftere geçsem karmaşasından kurtulamıyorum. Kırmızı Defter’in öykü olduğunu muhtemelen arada bağlantı olmadığını bilmeme rağmen bu fikir peşimi bırakmıyor.

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much to add that I haven't already written in my reviews of Auster's first two 'New York Trilogy' novels. In 'The Locked Room' Auster dances with the same themes, with slightly different variations. The novellas are more brothers to each other instead of cousins. In a lot of ways he reminds me of an earlier generations' Dave Eggers. There is definitely a lot of talent latent in the guy. He certainly can write, but unlike Fitzgerald who was able to tell a similar themed story in his novels and still provide weight. I just didn't feel the gravity. It was like Camus couldn't really decide whether to kill the Arab, didn't know if he cared or not, so he just walked around and killed himself but made the Arab watch.

I don't know. That may not be right. I'll probably just delete this review anyway. Only Otis will read it and I've asked him to delete all my reviews he doesn't like anyway. How do I guarantee this? Well, I could talk about Otis. I could tell you that there are things about author Auster, unrelated to his books I just don't like (who lives in NY Anyway?). He is a bad behaving author (untrue). He keeps sending me his manuscripts and wants me to say nice things about his work (untrue). I don't know. Is Auster married? Maybe, I'll go and console his wife now.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

It ties together everything enumerated upon in City of Glass and Ghosts very nicely, this is really the piece which gives the New York trilogy what overall coherence it has. While the story in locked room lacks the palpable sense of menace in the first two parts, it has the most developed characterization and the sharpest dialogue of the three. I also really enjoyed the way Auster weaves these little details of the past two stories into this final one. Despite its short length, it manages to be a very poignant rumination on the perils of obsessing over the works and lives of others, especially if those others are writers.

[Eshraq · Rating 4 out of 5]

اشتراکات این کتاب با کتاب دست به دهان از همین نویسنده برام خیلی جالب بود
یعنی یه جاهایی مبهوت میشدم که چرا مشابه همون اتفاقات اینجا هم میفته با اینکه دو تا کتاب کاملا جدا هستن و هدف اینجا چی بوده البته ممکنه هدف خاصی هم نبوده باشه
کتاب خوبی بود منو کاملا از فضای خودم خارج میکرد

[Kasper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! You really get under the narrator's skin. The backstory about him and Fanshawe was especially great, the description of their friendship recalling the likes of 'The Great Gatsby' and 'On the Road'.

Auster's vocabulary and his use of language is exemplary and the streams of thoughts in this novel seem both intimate and universally relatable. The only thing holding it back slightly is its ending.

[Amir · Rating 5 out of 5]

یکی از کتاب های زیبای آستر... واقعا سرگرم کننده بود-البته اگه از آستر انتظار دیگه ای نداشته باشیم
.

[Sheida · Rating 4 out of 5]

در نظرم، این داستان از سه‌گانه نیویورک جذابیت و هیجان انگیز تر از دو داستان قبلی بوده و بخش بیشتری از توقعات خواننده را که از دو داستان قبلی انتظار می‌رفت، برآورده می‌کند.

[Joe Court]

These three stories are finally the same story, but each one represents a different stage in my awareness of what it is about.

It's tempting to seek the solution to the literal mystery of this trilogy. Perhaps it's possible to find it. There are eulogies to the detective fiction genre in City of Glass which are so lovely that they make clear that Mr Auster adores it. If these books are pastiche, they can nevertheless compete with the best 'straight' detective fiction as far as jazz-like detachment goes, and that is the principal appeal of the genre for me. So perhaps there is a correct way to arrange the persons and personas of Quinn, Wilson, Work, Auster, Stillman, Blue, Black, Fanshawe, and the rest.

I think it's better to focus on the emotional mystery. The characters may be separable into two or three persons. However, the books' strength is their sense of things blurring into one, in the way they do if you shake your head to music or squint while looking out from a car on a motorway. The narrators blur into each other. The men who consume the narrators' lives blur into each other. The boundaries blur between points in time and between people in general and between the data from our different senses. The blurring is not a political statement or a narrative device. it is just the write-up of the probing of an impression. I greatly value such writing. Whether the blurring is cause for refined literary pleasure or for mortal panic is for the reader's intuitions to decide. So too is the question of what causes the blurring. Too much work? Too much reading? Too much sex? Human nature? Childhood experience? Obsession? Modern life? Marxian alienation? Poverty? Lack of structure? New York?

I'll end with a quote I've loved rereading. It's from Ghosts, in which the main characters are Blue, White, and Black. It is a good example of Auster's blurring. It also reminds me of two things which move and fascinate me: the song 'Águas de março' and Susan Sontag's lists of her likes and dislikes.

Take blue for example, he says. There are bluebirds and blue jays and blue herons. There are cornflowers and periwinkles. There is noon over New York. There are blueberries, huckleberries, and the Pacific Ocean. There are blue devils and blue ribbons and blue bloods. There is a voice singing the blues. There is my father's police uniform. There are blue laws and blue movies. There are my eyes and my name. He pauses, suddenly at a loss for more blue things, and then moves on to white. There are seagulls, he says, and terns and storks and cockatoos. There are the walls of this room and the sheets on my bed. There are lilies-of-the-valley, carnations, and the petals of daisies. There is the flag of peace and Chinese death. There is mother's milk and semen. There are my teeth. There are the whites of my eyes. There are white bass and white pines and white ants. There is the President's house and white rot. There are white lies and white heat. Then, without hesitating, he moves on to black, beginning with black books, the black market, and the Black Hand. There is night over New York, he says. There are the Chicago Black Sox. There are blackberries and crows, blackouts and black marks, Black Tuesday and the Black Death. There is blackmail. There is my hair. There is the ink that comes out of a pine. There is the world a blind man sees. Then, finally growing tired of the game, he begins to drift, saying to himself that there is no end to it. He falls asleep, dreams of things that happened long ago, and then, in the middle of the night, wakes up suddenly and begins pacing the room again, thinking about what he will do next.

[Stephanie Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

See more of my book reviews on my blog, Literary Flits

I picked up a copy of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy at a charity shop and this review is of the third book in the trilogy, The Locked Room. I've already reviewed City Of Glass (#1) and Ghosts (#2) on Literary Flits.



The Locked Room rounds off the trilogy nicely in that it follows a similar narrative structure of one character being hired, in strange circumstances, to spy upon another and builds upon this device. I enjoyed spotting references to the previous two books - already knowing, for example, the reason for Quinn's suprising disappearance - and I am glad I managed to read them all within a fairly short space of time otherwise I might not have picked up on all these nods to what had gone before. I was also still familiar with Auster's style which aided my enjoyment too. I'm undecided whether City Of Glass or The Locked Room ended up as my favourite story and, actually, I am not sure I would search out any more of Auster's writing any time soon. I'm glad to have now read this acclaimed author, but his work didn't grab my attention to the degree that I know it has other readers.

[Navid · Rating 5 out of 5]

قوی‌ترین قسمت از سه‌گانه نیویورک
وقتی داستان سه کتاب رو مرور می‌کنم، واقعاً شگفت‌انگیزه که داستان‌های مستقل کتاب، با تمام تفاوت‌هاشون عملاً یک داستان واحدن. و در عین حال سه داستان کاملاً متفاوت رو شکل دادن!

پل استر در قالب این سه داستان کوتاه ترکیب عجیب و پیچیده زیر رو به شکل هنرمندانه‌ای جا داده و به مخاطب‌اش عرضه می‌کنه:
- معماهایی در خور توجه که از لحظه شروع در برابر کنار گذاشته شدن مقاومت می‌کنن.
- پ��سش‌های عمیقاً فلسفی که مرتباً در خلال داستان‌ها مطرح میشن. عجیب نیست اگر بگم سه‌گانه نیویورک بیشتر از اینکه کتاب داستان باشه، یک مجموعه‌ی فلسفیه!
- مجموعه‌ی عظیمی از نشانه‌ها و ارجاعات درون‌متنی و برون‌متنی که استر به شکل بازیگوشانه‌ای در کتاب قرار میده تا مخاطب (همچون کارآگاه‌های قصه) به دنبال کشف‌شون بر بیاد.

چیزی که پل استر جوان بیشتر از همه باهاش درگیره، فرم‌های جدید برای قصه‌گوییه. و حقیقتاً در این کار بسیار موفقه. این یکی از اون جاهایی نادر و لذت‌بخشیه که «فرم» و «محتوا» نه تنها مکمل هم میشن، که در هم فرو میرن و هر کدوم دیگری رو تقویت میکنه.

شگفتی و احترام بسیار برای پل استر جوان که به احترام‌اش تنها میتونم کلاه از سر بردارم. 🎩 ء

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so this is the final book of the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, and, you know, I really don't know what it was all about. It was fascinating to read it, but I think I leave it as unenlightened as I came in. It's all very metafictional, and that is not usually my thing.

Still, the fact that I read all three in a single day, and the fact that I do quite like the prose, quiet as it is, should say that I think it was worth it. I think it might even stick with me, to be turned over in my thoughts now and then, just to check on the moss growing underneath...

[Diego Per · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fanshawe es un tipo excepcional, un genio pero raro. Escribe unas obras extraordinarias y desaparece dejando a su mujer y su bebé. Le encarga a su mujer que busque a su mejor amigo (un editor) y que le muestre los manuscritos. Su amigo publica los libros, son bien acogidos por la crítica, se enamora de la mujer de Fanshawe y se muda a vivir con ella. Pero quién es Fanshawe? la novela se vuelve un policial cuando el amigo intenta desenredar la vida de éste, cuándo empieza a buscarlo: es un típico caso de identidad, locura, extravagancia, introspección. Fanshawe parece siempre estar allí.