The New York Trilogy

After straying away from Agatha for a while and venturing into unknown mystery territory, I stumbled onto Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy.
The 3 books that he wrote in his trilogy : The City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room are all interlinked. The characters feel like one and the same yet the next moment all stand alone individuals at the same time.
My personal favorite out of the 3 would be Ghosts. Identifying the characters merely by colours. Blue, Black, White, Green, Gold etc.
According to Wiki, the themes that Auster tends to explore and deviate from the conventional detective mysteries, choosing instead to use the detective as the central character, flawed with inner demons to navigate around existential issues (i.e. philosophical issues centering around human, how we act, feel etc) and questions dealing with identity, space, language, and literature.

The City of Glass touches on the Origin of Language, quoting The Tower of Babel from the Bible and Victor the wild boy who grew up in the wild w/o being able to speak a language we can understand. It revolves around Quinn, a writer who was called in the middle of the night by mistake. At the other end, the person thought that his number belonged to a Private Eye called Paul Auster (yes, the name is the same as the author here lol) Quinn, being curious as well as trying to get himself into the detective characters he use to write about accepted the case. Characters whose names like Peter Stillman and Henry Dark pops ups again in The Locked Room where it has been written in first person without any reference to the narrator. It is about the friendship or subtle rivalry and loathing our narrator had always held for his friend Fanshawe. But when Fanshawe disappeared, leaving a wife and a baby son, our narrator was seek out to make the ends meet again. The journey begins with helping his friend to publish whatever work that is of standard and slowly it becomes an obsession to know where he is, who he was, where he has been, how he is now and why did he disappear in the first place. The red notebook that appeared in The City of Glass, the one that Quinn bought seemed to tie up the loose ends when it reappeared in The Locked Room when Fanshawe passed it to our narrator. Seemingly strange that these two stories are not connected at all yet the physical thing mentioned makes it seems like they are.

Ghosts is not as confusing and to me, it kind of explores the question of identity. Blue was sent by White to spy on Black, someone that always wrote and looked out of the window of his apartment. This assignment went on for years and Blue just needed to make a report and placed it in a mailbox. He would receive reimbursement for his job. Fair and simple enough the job sounds; but this does not stop Blue from making up theories about Black, forgoing everything including the future Mrs Blue who became ex-future Mrs Blue. The spying turned to disguising himself to make conversation with Black.

Well, the books are all kind of deep in a way and makes me ponder along as when I am reading them. haha but well, I am going to go back to Agatha as some of the books have due dates coming soon :)

God Bless!

=do something right=