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kell_xavi's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
This book is divided into two parts, a sort of before and muddled after, in which the narrator grows becomes less likeable as we learn more about him, and begin to love him. Levy takes us to East Germany in 1988, to London and Cape Cod, to Abbey Road, over and over as Saul Adler collages together frames of memory, trauma, history, shame, and love. Always, he seems remote and hurt, unsure about how to be, but convinced he is right in his ways.
This is an odd book of European newness, surveillance or suspicion of it from the outsider, of knowing and not knowing—Jennifer’s art, his own timeline, who is in his life. Sometimes it is as though each character is seeing, and hiding their information about, the others, most often at Saul’s expense. At other times, it seems they are trying to show him clearly, and the mirror is so deep inside him that he cannot see the surface.
The book’s jacket describes this narrator as narcissistic, but his brooding attention to self mostly seems clumsy and foolish, an air to be dealt with despite its casual harm. Similar to her ensemble in Hot Milk, Levy has created characters who are stubborn and affected, who are complex in their judgments and the loneliness that chafes at them. There’s constantly an absurdity to the happenings that is made more uncanny by how serious the narrative voice is. Saul is always in an academic or poetic reflection on history, his own and that of Europe as a whole, those that he projects onto others. He sees only partially, filling in the details until he has a complete picture, even as it fades further from the realities around him.
This is an odd book of European newness, surveillance or suspicion of it from the outsider, of knowing and not knowing—Jennifer’s art, his own timeline, who is in his life. Sometimes it is as though each character is seeing, and hiding their information about, the others, most often at Saul’s expense. At other times, it seems they are trying to show him clearly, and the mirror is so deep inside him that he cannot see the surface.
The book’s jacket describes this narrator as narcissistic, but his brooding attention to self mostly seems clumsy and foolish, an air to be dealt with despite its casual harm. Similar to her ensemble in Hot Milk, Levy has created characters who are stubborn and affected, who are complex in their judgments and the loneliness that chafes at them. There’s constantly an absurdity to the happenings that is made more uncanny by how serious the narrative voice is. Saul is always in an academic or poetic reflection on history, his own and that of Europe as a whole, those that he projects onto others. He sees only partially, filling in the details until he has a complete picture, even as it fades further from the realities around him.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Car accident, Child death, Death, Medical content, and Suicide attempt
Minor: War and Antisemitism
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