The New York Trilogy

The New York Trilogy (New York Trilogy #1-3)

by
3.93 of 5 stars 3.93  ·  rating details  ·  21,060 ratings  ·  1,250 reviews
Paul Auster's signature work, The New York Trilogy, consists of three interlocking novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room; haunting and mysterious tales that move at the breathless pace of a thriller.
Paperback, 308 pages
Published March 28th 2006 by Penguin Classics (first published 1986)
more details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee1984 by George OrwellThe Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. TolkienThe Catcher in the Rye by J.D. SalingerThe Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Best Books of the 20th Century
404th out of 4,698 books — 31,971 voters
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo CalvinoSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt VonnegutThe Name of the Rose by Umberto EcoRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom StoppardHouse of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Metafiction
9th out of 227 books — 265 voters


More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)
filter  |  sort: default (?)  |  rating details
notgettingenough
Paul Auster says....Adios Amazon.

Find the review here now:

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
David
Further update, June 19th 2012.

In response to several thoughtful comments that take issue with the nastiness of my initial review, I have come to the conclusion that the comments in question are essentially correct. Please see my own response in comment #32 in the discussion. And thanks to those who called me on this, apologies for my earlier vitriolic responses. In general, I try to acknowledge the validity of other opinions in my reviews and comments, something I notably failed to do in this d...more
Shovelmonkey1
Oct 09, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: people who like a little mind messing
Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list
I think this was my first encounter with Paul Auster, a man who I met through the cult of the 1001 books to read before you die list. Prior to that I was vaguely aware of Auster and his peculiar brand of love/loath inciting literature which had friends alternatively raging or swooning, but had never bothered my arse to go and see what all the fuss was about.

Turns out I rather loved this - once I had progressed beyond the first forty pages. For the first forty pages I'd already rather rudely pig...more
Cody
At times The New York Trilogy strikes me as something like the movie Saw for intellectual types. People who enjoy Saw tell me that it "messes with your mind," when what they really like are the suspense and the gore. Readers who enjoy The New York Trilogy tell me that it "challenges your perception of reality" (the intellectual form of the above statement), when what they really like is all of the cleverness and the self-reflexive smartypants in-jokes. The plot and many of the images and devices...more
kaelan
First, a brief harangue. I can’t help but noticing how often the word “pretentious” has been thrown around in the reviews for this book. What a bothersome word: pretentious. It’s a lot like the word “boring,” in that they both seem to fool the user into thinking that they mean something objective, when in fact they’re highly subjective. Nothing is inherently boring, just as nothing is inherently pretentious. On the contrary, these words say a lot more about the speaker than they do about the thi...more
Fahad
ثلاثية نيويورك

قرأت هذه الثلاثية قبل سنوات، وخربشت وقتها بعض الأفكار حولها، ولكن لأنني لم أكن حينها مهتم بنشر مراجعاتي للكتب، فبقيت هذه الأفكار في حالة غير مكتملة في ملف نصي مهمل، فلذا أعتذر مقدماً عن الحالة الغريبة التي قد تبدو بها هذه المراجعة، اعتبروها مراجعة معتقة نوعاً ما.

صدر الجزء الأول من ثلاثية نيويورك (مدينة الزجاج) سنة 1985 م، ثم صدر الجزءان التاليان (الأشباح) و(الغرفة الموصدة) في السنة التالية، وصارت الروايات الثلاث منذ ذلك الحين تصدر معا ً، تقدم الثلاثية عادة على أنها رواية تحري، وي...more
Zaki
I can see why people may not like this.

Paul Auster puts himself in the first story for one. How egotistical can you get? But there is a reason he does that which he explains in The Red Notebook.

The New York Trilogy is the strangest, most seductive thriller you could read.

I really liked it. It took me a little while (to get into it) to get on board. I feel like it’s a book that kind of creeps up on you and it slowly enchants you and you do kind of fall under its spell. It’s got a certain rhythm...more
Emir Never
The City of Glass. Daniel Quinn receives a misplaced call for Paul Auster, who, in relation with the call, should be a detective. Daniel, a former poet, playwright, essayist, and book translator who turned himself into a detective novel writer after losing his family, decides to assume the identity of detective Paul Auster.

Daniel then meets with the client, a strange man whose name is shared with someone else. There is a perceived danger to the client's life, and Daniel will have to avert that d...more
K.D. Oliveros
Jun 15, 2009 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books - Modern Fiction
Life is too short to re-read a book, but someday I will give time for this one. The reason is that I assumed that the book being a trilogy is composed of 3 totally unrelated stories since I read in the write up that the stories were published one at a time in a weekly magazine in the 80s. However, to my surprise, at the end of the 3rd story – The Locked Room (which by itself was the best among the 3) – it was revealed that the detective looking for Fanshawe was the main character in the first st...more
R.
It was only $2.95. So, I'll give it a shot.

*

Okay, pulled from the hall closet where it still lingers among dusty DVDs of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Martin Mull comedy albums. The previous reader left a bookmark; simple white square upon which two words were written: "exegetical" and "prelapsarian" - right before the chapter entitled, "The Locked Room"

*

Fawk. Auster has managed to accomplish everything I could ever hope; what's left? I finished City of Glass whilst drinking from a bottle of...more
Maryam
Paul Auster
پل استر نویسنده ی مشهور امریکایی
سه کتاب شهر شیشه ای، ارواح و اتاق در بسته با استقبال بی نظیری همراه شد که باعث ادغام این سه کتاب در یک مجموعه به نام سه گانه ی نیویورک شد


نمی شود آنقدر از کسی متنفر بود مگر آنکه قسمتی از روح مان آن را بسیار دوست داشته باشد
amal
image


ثلاثية نيويورك ترتب الأفكار والكلمات بشكل استثنائي ؛ ترتيب يشبه حقيقة شروق الشمس في منتصف ليل الجانب الآخر من الأرض، لامعنى مطلق للكلمات مع أوستر كل شيء يخضع للنسبية، غول المراقبة يبتلع أبطال القصص الثلاث حتى يتلاشى وجودهم في الآخر ، الكاتب يبدو ذا حس سيكوباتي يستدرج الفضول ويخنقه بالاستفزاز والتوقف المفاجئ في منتصف الطريق ، يقطع حبل أفكارك من المنتصف تماما كما تقول الصبوحة :)

اندمجت مع الأحداث وفكرت لو أن الإنسان يراقب نفسه كما يراقب الآخرين -كتحرّي- كيف ستكون النتائج ؟ وجدت التساؤل ف...more
JC
If you like trite, obvious and sophomoric writing, this is the book for you...this could have been such a cool trilogy. It was painful every page...HOWEVER, this was recommended to me by someone I really respect(ed) when it comes to books..so some of you may think I'm crazy (most do anyway)
Javier Jiménez
Fiel a mi costumbre, antes de empezar a leer el libro sabía muy poco, si no es que nada, acerca de la trama, solo recordaba haber leído que era un poco sobre detectives, tipo novela negra. Por lo tanto, no esperaba nada en particular, sabía que podía ocurrir cualquier cosa. Me gusta tener esa sensación de no saber lo que va a pasar al leer un libro o ver una película, de esa forma creo que estoy menos influenciado o predeterminado por factores externos. Sin duda este método me ha traído varias s...more
Jerry Ghazali
Trilogi tiga novel yang telah membikin aku berfikir panjang sebaik saja aku tiba ke muka surat terakhir novel ini. Aku tertarik dengan perungkaian unsur paradoks karakter fantasi rekaan Lewis Carroll iaitu Humpty Dumpty daripada novel pertama trilogi ini iaitu "City of Glass". Namun antara tiga novel, aku paling gemarkan novel kedua iaitu "Ghost" walaupun novel ketiga "The Locked Room" punya penyudah cerita yang memberi kejutan maksima lantas kepala aku yang tidak gatal digaru dengan sengaja.

Apa...more
Ben Winch
For a work that starts so strongly, The New York Trilogy descends into banal gibberish remarkably quickly, and continues in this mode until its unsurprising, unenlightening denouement. Presumably the result of the young Auster having improvised his opening in a fever-dream, put it aside, and then felt constrained but uninspired to continue it at a later date, this opening section is a small marvel of verbal invention and imagination, and entirely worthy of the two other would-be masters that pos...more
April
The New York Trilogy totally deserves 5 stars from me because it is amazing but I made the mistake of listening to the audio book version read by Joe Barrett whose "Casey Kasem-esque" voice was so disconcerting that I was continually distracted by his enunciation. At one point he pronounced prelude "prel-ude" splitting the word after the L and putting emphasis on the U! His female voices were creepy and his kid voices made me grimace with discomfort. Finally, I am not sure why he made the accent...more
Kelanth, numquam risit ubi dracones vivunt
La prima cosa che mi ha colpito in maniera positiva in questo libro è stata la scrittura, piena di "fronzoli", "merletti" e abbellimenti che rendono la lettura piena e corposa.

Mi sono piaciuti molto anche i continui riferimenti al "caso", al fato che nella vita ci accompagna. Molto singolari anche le digressioni sull'etimologia delle parole e la spiegazione di un punto di vista traslato di alcuni passaggi biblici.

Carino l'esempio dell'ombrello, che secondo un protagonista di una vicenda all'in...more
Audrey
I wish I had written about City of Glass right after I read it, because I don't remember it right now without any sort of refresher except that I thought it was awesome and that is also how I currently feel about Ghosts which I just finished approximately 45 minutes ago at a winery where I was selling cheese but also getting free wine.
1. A song was playing and it went "Or are you just an illusion? Are you just an illluuuuuuuuushun" and that freaked me out
[ these are all songs about illusions i...more
Paula
Apr 20, 2009 Paula rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Paula by: Margie Stein
City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986): Meta as in metafiction, also metaphysics and metaphor. This is fiction about fiction, writing about the writer. Who’s writing whom? Who’s the author and who’s the imagined character? Auster's characters aren’t “real” people (even when they are autobiographical) in the sense that you might invite one over for dinner, but are real in the sense that you might imagine yourself dissolving into fiction, or have the sense that the self is...more
Shek
For me, this was a problematic book, fraught with numerous problemats. For one thing I have a grievance with any book that expects the reader to slog halfway through it before any rewarding aspects begin to surface. I sympathize entirely with anyone who quits before getting to that point, since I very nearly did exactly that.

Also, I kept hearing that part I, "City of Glass", was the high point, and that afterward it went downhill. When I was halfway through
"Ghosts" (part II) I would have comple...more
Suzanne
This is my first experience with Paul Auster and I have to say that I am impressed. The three novellas included in this book are not difficult reads, but they have so much meat to them they aren't easy reads either. I found them to be very thought provoking. Is this kind of obsession or sense of duty really possible in the non-fiction world?

I started this book right after my English class discussed Samuel Beckett's Endgame which really got me prepared for this style of writing. I had never read...more
Nathaniel
It is not because of “City of Glass” that I am continuing into the second book of this trilogy; it is because the second installments are contained between the same covers and I neglected to bring an alternate book to the office. It takes hard work to make detective stories dull and to suck the intrigue out of mystery; but Auster seems to know how it’s done. It seems like he had just finished grad school and was filled with the conviction that contriving a book around concepts masquerading as ch...more
Alper Kumcu
The NY Trilogy is the early masterpiece of Auster. It clearly reflects Auster's style in every sense.What I like about the book is that it is multi-layered and can be read at each layer, namely, a psychological thriller, a detective novel and a meta-fiction about writing itself. I define the genre as "intelligent fiction" since the book is "magic-realism re-defined". The NY Trilogy can be regarded as the gateway to Auster's world.
Theoth
Ermmmm, I read this some years ago and can barely recall the second and third stories now. The three stories are 'interlocking', i.e. linked by themes and ideas, so it is not necessary to read all three in order, nor to read all three at all.

5 STARS for the first story which I do clearly recall hitting me a full blow to the frontal neurons. It starts as one kind of novel then changes into something else and keeps changing until the immersed reader is experiencing an identity crisis as slippery a...more
thegift
i remember buying these as 3 separate works, before it was sort of in a literary way, famous…

i had not taken detective fiction seriously until i read this work. maybe i do not fully understand it: it seems to me the most resonant, most refracted, of all his work. there is the search for original language revealed as flawed, in that language is between people, not things, not private but social. there is the process of writing and writers block similar to the indecipherable but necessary act of j...more
Jeremy Quinn
Jan 06, 2008 Jeremy Quinn rated it 1 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: Nobody.
I can't believe I read this all the way through, but I just kept thinking that at some point, something has to happen. I was disappointed. The writing is mechanical and boring. It's like being told a story by someone barely interested what they are saying. There is no experience to it, no stake in the characters, and like I said, nothing of note really happens. When Auster makes an attempt to wrap up the disjointed and feeble plot lines after two and three-quarter books of emptiness and abrupt e...more
Colin
All the one/five star reviews for this book are pretty hilarious. New York Trilogy is pretty interesting. Exasperating? Absolutely. Silly? Definetly. Genius? Ehh. Let's not go crazy. 100% worth checking out? Yes.

Seriously? One Star? One Star ratings should be applied judiciously. Ever have an aunt give you Tuesdays With Morrie? One Star. Did that girl you like tell you to read Ishmael? One Star. The New York Trilogy does not deserve One Star. Jesus.


Bear in mind that I liked House of Leaves.
La Stamberga dei Lettori
Definire questi tre racconti lunghi detective stories è alquanto fuorviante.
A parte l'atmosfera di genere poliziesco americano, in stile 'hardboiled' come si definiscono i gialli con detective privati, donne misteriose e fatalmente seducenti, ambientati in locali bui, solitari e generalmente malandati, i tre racconti, legati tra di loro da incroci casuali e dallo svolgersi tra le geometrie del tracciato urbano newyorchese, sono delle riflessioni, a tratti anche troppo cerebrali e metafisiche, s...more
Angelo Ricci
Leggendo Trilogia di New York di Paul Auster mi appare alla memoria, non so perché, l’immagine mitteleuropea di Elias Canetti e del suo Auto da fè. Per la “trilogia” mi riferisco al primo dei tre romanzi: Città di vetro. Daniel Quinn si nasconde dietro ad uno pseudonimo per scrivere romanzi polizieschi e si trova invischiato in una discussione con un altro personaggio (che porta il nome dell’autore stesso della “trilogia”) sulla genesi del Don Chisciotte, che vedrebbe concretizzarsi un gioco di...more
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 99 100 next »
topics  posts  views  last activity   
dissasociative personality disorder? 10 51 Feb 22, 2013 03:57pm  
نسخة عربية 1 6 Feb 21, 2013 07:30pm  
The Filipino Group: [Buddy Reads] The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (Aldrin, Bennard) Start Date: January 21 21 50 Jan 30, 2013 07:31am  
La Stamberga dei ...: Trilogia di New York di Paul Auster 2 10 Nov 21, 2012 04:33am  
Paul Auster's best book 4 54 Jul 30, 2012 07:18am  
I take your ratings to heart. 2 164 Jul 06, 2012 06:16pm  
The New York Trilogy (Paperback)
The New York Trilogy (Paperback)
Trilogia di New York. Città di vetro, Fantasmi, La stanza chiusa (Paperback)
The New York Trilogy: City of Glass/ Ghosts/ the Locked Room (Paperback)
The New York Trilogy  (Paperback)

296961
Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Sunset Park, Invisible, Man in the Dark, The Book of Illusions, The Brooklyn Follies, and The New York Triology, among many other works. His books have been translated into forty-three languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/paulau...
More about Paul Auster...
The Brooklyn Follies The Book of Illusions Moon Palace Invisible Leviathan

Share This Book

Your website
“Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.” 43 people liked it
“In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. Or, more bluntly: Wherever I am not is the place where I am myself. Or else, taking the bull by the horns: Anywhere out of the world.” 36 people liked it
More quotes…