Reviews

I got to the end of City of Glass, miraculously, but that's only because halfway through the book I was only moving my eyes without processing any of the words. I haven't been this bored with a book in awhile. The synopsis claims this is "a haunting and mysterious tale" and I easily believed this because the idea is admittedly intriguing: a writer named Quinn, mistaken for a man named Paul Auster, gets caught up in a case in which a son believes his father is going to kill him. The first few chapters are full of beautiful imagery that perhaps deserve to be called haunting and mysterious. I'll give Paul Auster that (side note: I really did not appreciate the fact that the author made himself a character in the story). However, I grew tired of his writing pretty quickly. It's not that his writing was bad—it was far from that. The problem was more that nothing happened in this book. How can you write a mystery novel without anything happening?! So yes, I was mystified, but not because of some fascinatingly complex and creative plot line. I was more amazed that Paul Auster was able to put so much detail into his writing yet somehow when the reader takes a step back, the whole novel is literally about nothing. There's no substance. Just a lot of pretty descriptions, and a lot of unnecessary allusions and symbols. I'm all for some deep symbolism or beautiful imagery but when there is hardly any plot to the book, it's just hard to care about it. Paul Auster said some great and profound things but because I felt nothing for his main character Quinn, and I wanted much more out of the mystery presented, I ended up unconsciously disregarding all of Auster's insight and wisdom. The last section of the book would have been great if it was a part of a different book, but I really had a hard time sympathizing with Quinn. I felt vert distant from him and the writing seemed detached from his emotions. If City of Glass wasn't so utterly boring maybe I would have enjoyed it, but unfortunately I was relieved when I finally—painfully—finished it.