There is no easy way out, no neat, pat answer as in most detective novels. Auster offers no solutions or explanations and that, in part, is the beauty of this novel and the other two in the Trilogy. He does meet up with Fanshawe but, of course, the mystery is not resolved, except for the narrator to say that all three novels of the Trilogy are really the same story, just written at different stages of awareness.
He keeps the information to himself and tries to rid himself of the Fanshawe identity. He then learns that Fanshawe is not dead but only hiding out. Indeed, as this novel is about identity as are the previous two in the Trilogy, he seems to be assuming the mantle and identity of Fanshawe. He starts to write a biography of Fanshawe. He marries Sophie and they have a daughter. Fanshawe is a writer and the narrator sets about publishing the manuscripts left behind so that Fanshawe’s reputation increases (and the narrator profits). Sophie Fanshawe (Sophie is the name of Auster’s daughter and Fanshawe the title of Hawthorne’s first novel, while Hawthorne’s wife was called Sophia) contacts the narrator because her husband, the narrator’s best friend when they were children, has disappeared. It is a bit easier-going than the first two, not least because it has a first-person narrator (albeit nameless) who seems more of a human and less of a cipher than the main characters in the other two. The third novel in the New York Trilogy takes us back to contemporary New York. Home » USA » Paul Auster » The Locked Room Paul Auster: The Locked Room
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