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johndiconsiglio's review
3.0
The title character of this often-perplexing, always-intriguing novel doesn’t actually see anything other than himself. He’s a young (or maybe old?) history scholar who’s side-swiped by a car while crossing the Beatles’ Abbey Road. The accident loops him through time. One moment he’s traveling to 1988 East Berlin, watched by Stasi spies as he falls in love with a translator & his sister; the next he’s in a London hospital bed in 2016, piecing together memory fragments. Is it saying something about the narcissism of history—how we only see events through lenses that touch us? Puzzling & provocative.
ja3m3's review
5.0
I love a book that not only sends me down an unmarked road, but does a complete u-turn midway through. Highly Recommend.
ellenharvell's review against another edition
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Only after I read the last page did I appreciate the story. I read the last lines, maybe five times.
Very unique way of story telling. It started out as a clear storyline and became "confusing" in the middle. I say this with full positivity. It is meant to be confusing because, I later realized that the latter part of the story is being told from the perspective of a dying person on which on his last days/ hours only wanted to remember selective parts of his memories..
Saul is a man who saw everything. He knew a loy of things, because of how he chose to live his life, his preferences and also his studies- he is a historian.
Just to realize that in his death bed, he only wanted to see a few specific people who came into his life. He wanted to see them so bad that he started putting their faces on other people's faces.
Very unique way of story telling. It started out as a clear storyline and became "confusing" in the middle. I say this with full positivity. It is meant to be confusing because, I later realized that the latter part of the story is being told from the perspective of a dying person on which on his last days/ hours only wanted to remember selective parts of his memories..
Saul is a man who saw everything. He knew a loy of things, because of how he chose to live his life, his preferences and also his studies- he is a historian.
Just to realize that in his death bed, he only wanted to see a few specific people who came into his life. He wanted to see them so bad that he started putting their faces on other people's faces.
bps's review
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
tensy's review
4.0
For most of the first part of this short novel I was totally confused, but I trusted Levy, whose writing I admire, to make some sense of it. All I can say without spoiling the plot, is to trust in Deborah Levy and you will be rewarded with how the story unfolds.
hades99's review
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
michaelcattigan's review against another edition
4.0
Disclaimer: Received from NetGalley and the publisher, Penguin, in exchange for an honest review.
There are some novels which flow fluidly like a river. Others are curved and twisted. Others are very linear taking a route from inciting incident to resolution without a deviation. Others are shaped like a tree, branching and dividing but never losing sight of the central trunk. The Man Who Saw Everything didn’t fall into any of these shapes – was it Vonnegut who talked about the shapes of stories? The Man Who Saw Everything was jagged and fragmented, like a child’s kaleidoscope, reflecting and repeating slivers of narrative.
Now, I’m not saying the above as a judgment at all, just my attempt at a description of this slippery little novel. And echoing images from the novel itself. Our main character is an historian focusing on the psychology of tyrants, Saul Adler. He is photographed repeatedly by his girlfriend Jennifer and those photographs are fragmented and reconstituted to be displayed as A Man in Pieces in an exhibition at one point; at another point, following a car accident when crossing the Abbey Road possibly recreating the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover – or maybe not – Saul tells us that the
wing mirror, from which he had glimpsed the man in pieces crossing the road, had shattered. A thousand and one slivers of glass were floating inside my head.
And this car accident is the central moment in the novel. It occurs in 1988 immediately prior to Saul’s departure for East Germany just before the Berlin Wall fell, causing minor abrasions; it also occurs in 2016, just after Britain had voted for Brexit, with catastrophic outcomes.
In 1988, Saul walks away from the accident, has somewhat vigorous sex with Jennifer before being dumped by her, and heads to the GDR. Once there, he falls in love with his translator, Walter, having a passionate and intense affair; has sex with Luna, Walter’s sister; betrays them both to the Stasi by ineptly and clumsily trying to arrange for Walter to flee the GDR with him. Or perhaps he didn’t. Or already had. Or will. Or, maybe, won’t.
Saul’s unreliability as a narrator is hinted at in the first half of the book as he tells Walter and Luna when and how the Berlin Wall will fall as if it were – as it is – an historical event. By the time we reach the second half, set in 2016, it becomes explicit and disorienting: the repetition of the Abbey Road accident, the recurring motifs of toy trains and pineapple, the slipping into the present of Rainer and Wolf or Wolfgang, as well as Walter – characters we had met in the 1988 narrative – and Saul’s inability to separate the two time frames. The 1988 narrative was, surely, at least in part a delusional, morphine-fuelled, twisted, dreamlike reconstruction – or was it? Memory, like time, becomes a slippery affair for Saul and, therefore the reader, as we learn that some deaths which had been central to our understanding had not actually occurred, and some tragedies of immense import have been forgotten. Some places are still rooted, but the person with whom Saul is sharing them shifts.
For a novel entitled The Man Who Saw Everything, seeing and overseeing and spying and camera lenses and watching abound through it, and yet the impossibility of seeing anything seems at the heart of the novel.
It is one of those novels where you feel compelled to add “Or was it?” at the end of every statement about it, because nothing is ever fully resolved or reconnected. There is no reliable point of view – and by the end of the novel, you wonder whether it matters: the world within Saul’s head, jagged and disorienting as it is, has a lyricism to it which you’d fear the tedium of the mundane world would burst.
Levy’s writing is taut and economical here, and Saul is apparently forbidden from mentioning physical descriptions of Jennifer, although his own long hair and freakish beauty are referenced repeatedly.
Whilst I applaud the control and the depth of the novel, I find it hard to give this a five star rating. It appealed to be intellectually rather than emotionally (although the final chapters did get there) or sensually; Saul was a little too much like a cipher rather than a character for certainly the first half of the novel.
As a longlisted book for the Man Booker, I wouldn’t be convinced that it would progress to the shortlist, save for the weight of the name of the author, Deborah Levy.
Ratings:
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Plot / Pace: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Language: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Publisher: Penguin
Date: 29th August 2019
Available: Amazon
There are some novels which flow fluidly like a river. Others are curved and twisted. Others are very linear taking a route from inciting incident to resolution without a deviation. Others are shaped like a tree, branching and dividing but never losing sight of the central trunk. The Man Who Saw Everything didn’t fall into any of these shapes – was it Vonnegut who talked about the shapes of stories? The Man Who Saw Everything was jagged and fragmented, like a child’s kaleidoscope, reflecting and repeating slivers of narrative.
Now, I’m not saying the above as a judgment at all, just my attempt at a description of this slippery little novel. And echoing images from the novel itself. Our main character is an historian focusing on the psychology of tyrants, Saul Adler. He is photographed repeatedly by his girlfriend Jennifer and those photographs are fragmented and reconstituted to be displayed as A Man in Pieces in an exhibition at one point; at another point, following a car accident when crossing the Abbey Road possibly recreating the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover – or maybe not – Saul tells us that the
wing mirror, from which he had glimpsed the man in pieces crossing the road, had shattered. A thousand and one slivers of glass were floating inside my head.
And this car accident is the central moment in the novel. It occurs in 1988 immediately prior to Saul’s departure for East Germany just before the Berlin Wall fell, causing minor abrasions; it also occurs in 2016, just after Britain had voted for Brexit, with catastrophic outcomes.
In 1988, Saul walks away from the accident, has somewhat vigorous sex with Jennifer before being dumped by her, and heads to the GDR. Once there, he falls in love with his translator, Walter, having a passionate and intense affair; has sex with Luna, Walter’s sister; betrays them both to the Stasi by ineptly and clumsily trying to arrange for Walter to flee the GDR with him. Or perhaps he didn’t. Or already had. Or will. Or, maybe, won’t.
Saul’s unreliability as a narrator is hinted at in the first half of the book as he tells Walter and Luna when and how the Berlin Wall will fall as if it were – as it is – an historical event. By the time we reach the second half, set in 2016, it becomes explicit and disorienting: the repetition of the Abbey Road accident, the recurring motifs of toy trains and pineapple, the slipping into the present of Rainer and Wolf or Wolfgang, as well as Walter – characters we had met in the 1988 narrative – and Saul’s inability to separate the two time frames. The 1988 narrative was, surely, at least in part a delusional, morphine-fuelled, twisted, dreamlike reconstruction – or was it? Memory, like time, becomes a slippery affair for Saul and, therefore the reader, as we learn that some deaths which had been central to our understanding had not actually occurred, and some tragedies of immense import have been forgotten. Some places are still rooted, but the person with whom Saul is sharing them shifts.
For a novel entitled The Man Who Saw Everything, seeing and overseeing and spying and camera lenses and watching abound through it, and yet the impossibility of seeing anything seems at the heart of the novel.
It is one of those novels where you feel compelled to add “Or was it?” at the end of every statement about it, because nothing is ever fully resolved or reconnected. There is no reliable point of view – and by the end of the novel, you wonder whether it matters: the world within Saul’s head, jagged and disorienting as it is, has a lyricism to it which you’d fear the tedium of the mundane world would burst.
Levy’s writing is taut and economical here, and Saul is apparently forbidden from mentioning physical descriptions of Jennifer, although his own long hair and freakish beauty are referenced repeatedly.
Whilst I applaud the control and the depth of the novel, I find it hard to give this a five star rating. It appealed to be intellectually rather than emotionally (although the final chapters did get there) or sensually; Saul was a little too much like a cipher rather than a character for certainly the first half of the novel.
As a longlisted book for the Man Booker, I wouldn’t be convinced that it would progress to the shortlist, save for the weight of the name of the author, Deborah Levy.
Ratings:
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Plot / Pace: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Language: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Publisher: Penguin
Date: 29th August 2019
Available: Amazon
sarahlopod's review
4.0
I was frightened of everything in the past and whatever was going to happen next.
3.5 stars
This review can also be found on my blog.
This is a short novel that packs quite a punch. The first half feels slow, and a little strange at times, but everything is suddenly turned on its head in the second half. There is so much going on and yet it never seems like too much for the page count. A lot of the writing is very simplistic, which I think works. Had it been more complex, I think it would have been easy to get lost in. It's hard for me to say much about this without spoilers, but I do think this was quite a worthwhile read although I was left wanting. Not a new favorite, but I can see why this has been so highly lauded and perhaps worth an eventual reread to see if that ties things together a bit better.
content warnings: domestic abuse; nazi mentions; homophobia.
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bianca89279's review against another edition
2.0
The Man Who Saw Everything was easy to read and, at only two hundred pages, a good size.
Nevertheless, it took me forever to finish it, several times I considered abandoning it.
Here I come out and admit that I didn't get the point of this novel. Worst of all, it didn't elicit any feelings for its main character.
I could come up with something more eloquent but I can't be bothered.
Nevertheless, it took me forever to finish it, several times I considered abandoning it.
Here I come out and admit that I didn't get the point of this novel. Worst of all, it didn't elicit any feelings for its main character.
I could come up with something more eloquent but I can't be bothered.
henrymarlene's review
4.0
In the glow of sun and smoke filled sky, I finished 'The man who saw everything' by Deborah Levy. A short read at 200 odd pages, it is built on perception. Perceptions of the main character, Saul, mingled with perceptions of time, my perceptions as the reader, trying to work out what was real, what was when, and whether I needed to ask those questions. I found Saul was hard to feel sorry for, and it was intriguing to read how Jennifer, his girlfriend, made him her muse, which left him struggling with whether she only loved him for his beauty. And his string of pearls. Funny when I think about them when they were cut from his neck and restrung - was this the point where nothing was really as it seemed? Loved it, recommend it to you.
Let me know if you read it and what you thought.
Let me know if you read it and what you thought.