The New York Trilogy

While I've heard the name of Paul Auster kicked around for years, I don't recall what prompted me to finally pick up The New York Trilogy.  I'm grateful to whatever it was because I really enjoyed these postmodern deconstructions of the detective novel.  The Trilogy contains three short novels that appear unrelated until one arrives at the final pages of the third.  While the plot of each of those is relatively simple and easy to follow, and the writing soberly realistic, their strange and almost spooky atmosphere turns them into haunting parables.  As with Kafka though, it's hard to say what they're parables about, unless it would be the tortured process of writing them.