The Locked Room: 3 (New York Trilogy) [Mass Market Paperback]

I read this work with such fascination that I somehow forgot my daily work- routine and was lost in it, beginning to end. It is a remarkable piece of work. Like the first work of the trilogy 'City of Glass' it seems to me to reach the higher levels of Literary Creation.

The book is about two friends , the narrator and Fanshawe. Fanshawe has disappeared and after six months his wife, Sophia( Hawthorne is in this story beginning to end. Hawthorne's wife is Sophia Peabody, and Fanshawe a character of his fiction) contacts his childhood best and only friend . She does this not in the hope of finding her husband, but because she needs an evaluation of the ' writing' Fanshawe has left behind. Fanshawe made no effort to publish in his lifetime. Her secret motive is to break out of her loneliness, and in the ensuing action the inevitable will happen and she and the writer- friend will fall in love, love and marry. The writer- narrator will become the adopted father of the child who she was pregnant with when Fanshawe abandoned her.

There is a most moving description of the childhood friendship. There is also the fascinating story of Fanshawe's family( The father who died of cancer, the sister dependent on Fanshawe who went mad perhaps because of him) and the mother who it turns out hates her son. There is a surprising remeeting between the writer- friend and Fanshawe's mother in which their mutual resentment and hatred for Fanshawe is motive to an illicit vengeful act of physical love which is in fact an act of physical hate.

The description of the literary success of the presumed dead Fanshawe, of the misguided effort of the narrator- friend to write a Fanshawe biography(And the effect of this on his marriage) are also parts of the story.

I will stop telling or badly retelling the main story of the book to simply say the following about Auster and this work. I found this work as I have said a work of the highest quality and interest. Auster's capacity to surprise is one element of his great gift as a storyteller. There are in his work often, small stories within stories, which in themselves are worth the price of the volume. His retelling here for instance the life or the five or six different lives of Lorenzo da Ponte Mozart's librettist for his operas illustrates Austerian principles about life perfectly . As Auster sees it we are involved in an endless game of chance which means our lives continually surprise us. It also means by implication that our lives are mysteries which are never fully solved, even by ourselves.

Auster is a great craftsman of plot and character surprise and re- invention.

Fanshawe the main character of this work is allegedly locked inside himself, a mystery even to himself. His mother however accuses him of a tremendous coldness, of an inability to truly connect to or love anyone else. She commends the writer- narrator for his loving relation to his mother. Obviously his ability to love, to truly care for another is what enables him to connect up with Sophia in a real way. It is also probably the reason Fanshawe has chosen him for the task.

But again the genius of the work is the cold- hearted Fanshawe.

I must admit that with all my great admiration for the work of Auster I do feel a certain coldness in his work, his tone, his relation to his character. Even the best of them are somehow discarded without our knowing their true fates.

Is Auster himself too cold, too austere in his own judgment? Or is he a character encompassing the qualities of the two writers, Fanshawe and his narrator - friend, the distant isolated genius, and the warm loving family man?

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

If you read City of Glass and Ghosts, read The Locked Room. There is no point in stopping now, but do not expect anything to be cleared up.

Back when I read the New york Trilogy the books were sold seperately and therefore I have so far reviewed each book under its single title. If you own this one, you probably bought it with the other two so you might as well read it.

Remember, it will not answer any questions, but it is interesting like the first two books of the NY Trilogy.