Reviews

The Field by Robert Seethaler

engyz's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.0

chris_tyson's review against another edition

3.0

Hit or miss for me. At points this book is very poignant, at others it reads more like something written for a creative writing class. His work “A Whole Life” is so perfect I keep reading his other works, but so far nothing has come close.

lieowl's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

bookshopjuliet's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

anorthernreader's review against another edition

hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.0

thebooktrail88's review against another edition

3.0

Booktrail the locations in The Field

Interesting premise but a bit morbid. In the fictional town of Paulstadt in Germany, a patch of land has been set aside to bury its dead. These people then rest there at the heart of their community and through their voices from beyond the grave tell the stories you discover in this book. It’s not really a novel, more a series of vignettes of lives lived, histories shared and a display of how time and place passes and changes each and every one of us.

It’s clever how Paulstadt is fictional as this helps to ground the novel in a place, any place, so that this novel transcends both its fictional and physical borders. The emotional borders are the most heartbreaking though.

The reading experience was unique but fleeting. It’s akin to wandering in a cemetery and having each of the people buried below tell you their story. Brief and affecting but once you leave that cemetery, the mist descends and you are left with an overall picture of lives lived and faded memories fluttering in the air.

oldmansimms's review against another edition

2.0

A collection of stories, as told from the perspectives of the inhabitants of a small-town graveyard. Each individual story is usually fine, but I found it hard to really get into the book as a whole, perhaps because of the lack of connection between the stories -- occasionally you'll get a twinkling of one of the other characters in the background of a story, but for the most part there's less connection than you might expect from a small town where presumably there'd be a lot of overlap. The standout for me was one story with about a man with a gambling addiction and then the following story, from the point of view of his wife, providing a different perspective on the same events, so the lack of other instances of these interconnections felt like a missed opportunity. The graveyard conceit also meant I couldn't help but compare it to Lincoln in the Bardo, which is a hard act to follow; I found myself just itching to read that again instead.

marieclaire_15's review against another edition

lighthearted slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

thereadingparamedic's review against another edition

3.0

I absolutely love Robert Seethaler’s writing (beautifully translated by Charlotte Collins) - The Tobacconist is one of my favourite books ever - but The Field fell a bit short of the mark for me. It’s a bit like a collection of short stories - tales told from the grave of those buried in the field of Paulstadt’s cemetery. The lives are intertwined to some extent but at times I lost the connection.

I still enjoyed it but given my love for Seethaler, I had high expectations & The Field just wasn’t quite there.

Thank you to Picador for sending me a proof in exchange for an honest review.

loldesh's review against another edition

5.0

...Çim biçme makinesinin takırtılarını duyar gibi olmuştum. Ya da dışarıda kar fırtınası mı vardı yoksa? Sana pencereyi kapatmanı söylemiş miydim? Yarınlardan söz etmiş miydim? Seni seviyorum, demiş miydim? Anımsıyor musun?

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