The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 29 March 2000
by Paul Auster
Blue, a private detective who once worked for Brown, is hired by White to spy on Black who lives on Orange Street in Brooklyn. This is the colorful main story in this intriguing mystery. The book, while following the pattern of mystery novels at its outset, becomes a convoluted tale of loneliness and despair; the inward-turned life of the writer and the haunting motivations that bring him or her to the page. Blue begins to doubt the world around him, his very existence, as if trapped in a book being written by Black all along. And in its inevitable outcome, the reader may be left wondering what was real and what wasn't. This is a very short novel, the second in Auster's New York Trilogy (which has since been published in a single volume). The book moves rapidly and is hard to put down. Auster's gift for capturing the mood of the New York streets rings clear and sharp. A puzzling and intricate little book.
Also by Auster: [The Locked Room] [The Book of Illusions]