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Auster’s trilogy concludes strongly, with the best of the three novels.
In the first two Auster used mystery to set the scene for a philosophical consideration of identity and dealing with trauma. Though this is similarly structured in its first half, it is a more usual mystery story. An average and unnamed New York writer struggling for purpose in his life, finds it in taking over the work and life of a more gifted childhood friend, who has gone missing.
In the mid 1970s a young book critic gets a letter from the wife of a friend, Sophie Fanshawe, who implores him to help find her husband, who has disappeared, leaving Sophie with a baby, boxes of unpublished manuscripts, and, more strangely, instructions on how to proceed should such circumstances arise.
Soon, due to the narrator’s input, several of Fanshawe’s plays and poems have been successfully published, and he has become romantically involved with Sophie, and step-father to her young son.
Plot may be secondary, but as opposed to the earlier books in the trilogy, to know any more may act as a spoiler, and several reviewers reveal too much.
Metaphysical aspects do crop up in the second half, but less so than in City of Glass and Ghosts.
It’s a suitable ending to an enjoyable trio of books.
The narrator does actually say at one stage..
Here’s a clip..
In the first two Auster used mystery to set the scene for a philosophical consideration of identity and dealing with trauma. Though this is similarly structured in its first half, it is a more usual mystery story. An average and unnamed New York writer struggling for purpose in his life, finds it in taking over the work and life of a more gifted childhood friend, who has gone missing.
In the mid 1970s a young book critic gets a letter from the wife of a friend, Sophie Fanshawe, who implores him to help find her husband, who has disappeared, leaving Sophie with a baby, boxes of unpublished manuscripts, and, more strangely, instructions on how to proceed should such circumstances arise.
Soon, due to the narrator’s input, several of Fanshawe’s plays and poems have been successfully published, and he has become romantically involved with Sophie, and step-father to her young son.
Plot may be secondary, but as opposed to the earlier books in the trilogy, to know any more may act as a spoiler, and several reviewers reveal too much.
Metaphysical aspects do crop up in the second half, but less so than in City of Glass and Ghosts.
It’s a suitable ending to an enjoyable trio of books.
The narrator does actually say at one stage..
These three stories are finally the same story, but each one represents a different stage in my awareness of what it is about.
Here’s a clip..
”In a book I once read by Peter Freuchen," Fanshawe writes,
"the famous Arctic explorer describes being trapped by a blizzard in northern Greenland. Alone, his supplies dwindling, he decided to build an igloo and wait out the storm. Many days passed.
Afraid, above all, that he would be attacked by wolves—for he heard them prowling hungrily on the roof of his igloo—he would periodically step outside and sing at the top of his lungs in order to frighten them away. But the wind was blowing fiercely, and no matter how hard he sang, the only thing he could hear was the wind. If this was a serious problem, however, the problem of the igloo itself was much greater. For Freuchen began to notice that the walls of his little shelter were gradually closing in on him.
Because of the particular weather conditions outside, his breath was literally freezing to the walls, and with each breath the walls became that much thicker, the igloo became that much smaller, until eventually there was almost no room left for his body. It is surely a frightening thing, to imagine breathing yourself into a coffin of ice, and to my mind considerably more compelling than, say, The Pit and the Pendulum by Poe. For in this case it is the man himself who is the agent of his own destruction, and further, the instrument of that destruction is the very thing he needs to keep himself alive. For surely a man cannot live if he does not breathe. But at the same time, he will not live if he does breathe.
Curiously, I do not remember how Freuchen managed to escape his predicament. But needless to say, he did escape.”
