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wordsofclover 's review for:
The Man Who Saw Everything
by Deborah Levy
I received a free digital copy of this book from the publishers/author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
It's 1988, and Saul Adler, a historian, is getting ready to travel to East Berlin to study when he is clipped by a car as he crosses the famous Abbey Road crosswalk for a photograph. Saul shrugs off the near miss but the incident becomes a catalyst for everything that follows in Saul's life - from the people he meets in Berlin, the connections he forges and the illness he suffers from 30 years later.
This is a book I went into not really knowing what to expect but preparing myself to not enjoy it. I think because I haven't had much luck with Man Booker Prize authors before, I was afraid Deborah Levy wouldn't be for me. But her writing, and her unfolding of Saul's narcissistic but utterly endearing character really spoke to me, and I truly loved this book.
I really found myself warming to Saul - from his beautiful looks to the almost tender way he seemed to go through life. He seemed strangely innocent in a lot of things, and he was the type of character you wanted to bring into your arms and protect from the world. His relationships with both Jennifer and Walter were both real and complex, and he seemed to really love yet it was never truly enough for anyone.
He had not censored his first thought when he'd touched me. His hands had been fluent in every language, his lips soft, his body hard."
It was really interesting as well to see Saul navigate East Berlin in 1988, a year away from the unification of Berlin, and still a totalitarian state in a way. It was so different from everything we know today, and it's so easy to forget that it wasn't actually that long ago that the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was split in this horrid way. Saul definitely does appear to really know the danger he is in and at all times, and we do see him and the people he loves suffer because his naivety eventually. But the brief look we got at East Berlin, was an intriguing one. I would have liked for more of the book to be focused on this time in Saul's life.
There's definitely a different feel to the second part in the book, set in 2016, and it can get quite confusing at times. It's hard to really know what Saul is thinking and what's real and not real, and what really happened. And as a reader, I began to question the story we had just read from 1988 as it appears some things didn't happen (the matchbox of his father's ashes for example). But even in this part, Saul was still Saul - and though he was older, fatter and not in his right mind, it was still very easy to love him.
There was something just really beautiful about this entire story and I loved been carried along with it.
It's 1988, and Saul Adler, a historian, is getting ready to travel to East Berlin to study when he is clipped by a car as he crosses the famous Abbey Road crosswalk for a photograph. Saul shrugs off the near miss but the incident becomes a catalyst for everything that follows in Saul's life - from the people he meets in Berlin, the connections he forges and the illness he suffers from 30 years later.
This is a book I went into not really knowing what to expect but preparing myself to not enjoy it. I think because I haven't had much luck with Man Booker Prize authors before, I was afraid Deborah Levy wouldn't be for me. But her writing, and her unfolding of Saul's narcissistic but utterly endearing character really spoke to me, and I truly loved this book.
I really found myself warming to Saul - from his beautiful looks to the almost tender way he seemed to go through life. He seemed strangely innocent in a lot of things, and he was the type of character you wanted to bring into your arms and protect from the world. His relationships with both Jennifer and Walter were both real and complex, and he seemed to really love yet it was never truly enough for anyone.
He had not censored his first thought when he'd touched me. His hands had been fluent in every language, his lips soft, his body hard."
It was really interesting as well to see Saul navigate East Berlin in 1988, a year away from the unification of Berlin, and still a totalitarian state in a way. It was so different from everything we know today, and it's so easy to forget that it wasn't actually that long ago that the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was split in this horrid way. Saul definitely does appear to really know the danger he is in and at all times, and we do see him and the people he loves suffer because his naivety eventually. But the brief look we got at East Berlin, was an intriguing one. I would have liked for more of the book to be focused on this time in Saul's life.
There's definitely a different feel to the second part in the book, set in 2016, and it can get quite confusing at times. It's hard to really know what Saul is thinking and what's real and not real, and what really happened. And as a reader, I began to question the story we had just read from 1988 as it appears some things didn't happen (the matchbox of his father's ashes for example). But even in this part, Saul was still Saul - and though he was older, fatter and not in his right mind, it was still very easy to love him.
There was something just really beautiful about this entire story and I loved been carried along with it.