What if you love a book so much you can’t bear for it to end? There may be a solution: Read books that have a sequel or — even better — read a trilogy. One of the best known general fiction trilogies is Robertson Davies’ famous “Deptford Trilogy,” which focuses on Deptford, Ontario, and its inhabitants and begins with the act of a small boy throwing a snowball and its resultant consequences. Each beautifully written novel of the trio — Fifth Business, The Manticore and World of Wonders — takes the same action from a different character’s point of view. Davies can keeping you going for quite a while (he wrote three other trilogies), but you might also want to consider these three authors’ trilogies:
The “New York Trilogy” by Paul Auster, perhaps best described as postmodern detective fiction, features three interlocking novels, City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room — all on the nature of identity. In a more exotic vein, Egyptian novelist and nobelist Naguib Mahfouz has written “The Cairo Trilogy” – Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street. Each title is an actual street name in the city of Cairo. The novels
focus on a Muslim Cairo patriarch and his family from the years 1917 to 1944.
Cheryl Mendelson has written a sophisticated trilogy about the well-heeled inhabitants of New York City’s Upper Westside Morningside Heights neighborhood. The novels, in order, are Morningside Heights, Love, Work, Children and Anything for Jane. A modern Jane Austen, Mendelson has written three charming novels of manners where the neighborhood plays the starring role.
Enjoy!
~ Susan
.

Leave a Comment