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Sophie Fanshawe, who implores him to help find her husband, who has disappeared, leaving Sophie with a baby, boxes of unpublished manuscripts, and, more strangely, instructions on how to proceed should such circumstances arise.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..

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.”

Üçlemenin en iyi kitabıydı. Yine de bende beklediğim etkiyi bırakmadı. Okumak istediğim bir yazardan okumak istediğim bir seriyi tamamlamış oldum, başka kitaplarını okumak ister miyim, zaman ayırır mıyım? Sanmıyorum.

Geçmişten gelen, hayran olunan bir arkadaşın hayatına hiç beklenmedik bir şekilde adım adım sahip olmak. Bu geçişte büyük bir haz yaşarken bir yandan büyük bir kaos ve kargaşanın içine sürüklemek.

Gerçekten sana ait olmayan bir hayatı, sana aitmiş gibi yaşayabilir misin?

Sana ait olmayan başarı, eş, çocuk, ana ile kurgusal bir düzende var olabilir misin?

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.

3.5/5

الجزء الثالث من ثلاثية نيويورك:
الجزء الأكبر والأجمل، يتحرك بنفس وتيرة الجزئين السابقين ، لكنه لا يتخلى عن غموضه الذي يحمل طابعا خاصا مشتركا مع الأعمال السابقة.

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

4.5

Me sorprende gratamente encontrar historias tan extraordinarias narradas en menos de 150 páginas, es mi primer libro de la trilogía de NY y me mantuvo siempre emocionado con el buen ritmo y suspenso que tiene, el final siento que no le hace justicia a toda la obra pero merece cada página leída. ¡Disfrútenlo!

No es lo mejor del autor pero tiene lo suyo.

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.

La última novela de la trilogía de Nueva York es la que más me ha gustado. Un relato trepidante, con muchas interrogantes que no se resuelven, pero que eso no va en contra del resultado final, sino que es un buen tema de discusión y de reflexión.

Este libro cierra la trilogía de New York de Paul Auster. Le pongo tres estrellas, solo porque los otros dos me gustaron más. En este caso, me resultó un poco densa la trama; y el final, flojo. De todas formas, me encanta como escribe este tipo. Los personajes están muy bien desarrollados y continúa en la línea de los conflictos de identidad. Fue genial que retomara ideas del primer libro, logra así una conexión que pensé que no iba a haber entre los tres.