Austerlitz

Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: An amazing book, very beautifully written. I took me a while to get into it -- the tone's are grim and there's not a lot going on in terms of action -- but sticking with it proved well worth while. This book reminds one that sometimes the beauty of the words can transcend the story being told.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and .. well, boring
Review: Maybe it's because people forget about good, lengthy books of the sort that wander well and richly as they survey a place and a period in time and make them characters in the story (Midnight's Children, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Songlines...), and then we come across something resembling such a thing and set in Europe, and dealing -- after an awful many pages -- with the Holocaust, and written, no less by a German, and they think this MUST, no, this IS great. And...well, it's not.
The critics like it because it's a critic's book, heavy and full European ambiance and conceit, and terribly thin on plot.

I found it to be strangely over- and under-wrought at once. It's a string of things, events, cities, commentaries. The telling is thick and clumsy, which could be the translation's fault. But I have to pick at the fact that it begins with a first person narration which is followed rather seamlessly by a first person narration by Austerlitz which is constantly interrupted by the first narrator's voice butting in with "..Austerlitz said..". The effect is really weird and distracting. It pulls one right out of the story. But it's unbelievable that these things should be issues at all. Why not just separate these chapters and let them stand? I can deal with the lack of paragraph breaks.

As far as content, it is not a rich book as much as it is merely full of stuff that ultimately doesn't cohere. Nor is it profound as it pretends to be. One feels the narrator setting up scene after scene -- the repeated, fortuitous encounters with Austerlitz, the detailed descriptions of forts and their builders, the photographs that accompany the text -- but these things do not ignite the narrative, they only keep one thinking perhaps there is something one has missed, and it will all add up eventually, but it never does. It's a catalog of items, a museum of someone's cherished but unconnected keepsakes that are not that interesting after all.

Rating:
Summary: Layers of Stories
Review: Austerlitz is not your typical novel. There is a narrator, but we never discover his name. He's not really that important--rather he recounts the story of Jacques Austerlitz as he recounted it to our narrator. Austerlitz himself does not fully know his own story, first-hand, but rather must discover truths about himself, his family, his heritage, even his own name, during the course of his life. As long as he could remember, until he was 15 he believed he was Welsh--but then discovers that he had emigrated to Wales in 1939, to be cared for by a childless Welsh couple he thought were his parents. He returns to Eastern Europe to discover his true heritage, and there is assaulted by the ruins of memory--both his and those who knew him. Austerlitz is a fascinating novel, with an interesting structure and approach. The story you read is somehow not the story--you must sift through the elements to get to the heart of the truth. An excellent, well-done, moving novel.

Rating:
Summary: Austerlitz - what's the fuss?
Review: I really wanted to like this book but the author just tries too hard. Understanding (a little) about disposessed Jewish family, the holocaust, seperation and loss of loved ones, - this prose style feels heavy, contrived and too anxious to paint a descriptive masterpiece in the style of Balzac.
Sorry, probably the rest of the world thinks its great, like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but it's not for me. (Mind you, I did persevere to the end in case there was some exciting turn of events).

Rating:
Summary: All I could do was sigh
Review: If I could I would give no stars. I could read barely a hundred pages of this book and would not have read even one had it not been this month's book group selection. In fact I would not have read even one paragraph, that is if one could be discerned. The book seems to be one endless run-on paragraph. It was sort of like attempting to swim the Atlantic. Now I have to attend a book group meeting where I explain why this book is not worth the paper it is written on. As long as the trees were already dead I guess that doesn't matter. ... Readers beware! Don't believe the hype written by the pretentious "critics" who adorn the first few pages and the back cover of this book. Together they create a wall of slaver. That wall makes a literate reader like myself tremble with fear when I compare the actual writing to the praise and feel myself to be the dumbest individual on earth. But so be it. Stay away if you want a compelling, good read.

Rating:
Summary: Not for Those Feeble Readers who want Easy Linearity
Review: I have never been too baffled by those benighted readers who, upon reading a literary work well beyond their capabilities, rush to share their discontent with the rest of their household in a tone that allows them to feel that it was not they, but the author, who was at fault for their confusion. The illusion of intellectuality, after all, is understandable.

But when these philistines dash out of their caves to share their comments with the whole world, completely unaware that their disdainful diatribes are as foolish as the barkbark of cats, someone should say to them now, kids, it is time to sush and go to bed.

Austerlitz is not a difficult book to read, or an intellectual exercise without a story. For those readers who have encountered--even partially and realizing many of their experiments failed--Woolf, Musil, Broch, Kafka, Proust, Perec, and others who do not attempt to over simplify the complexities of existence, Austerlitz surely stands as a revelatory experience, both for its newness of form (which mirrors what weighs on the character) and the feeling that it leaves behind (similar perhaps to that languid and sinking feeling one gets after listening to Arvo Part).

For a while, in the beginning of Austerlitz, the reader has no bearings, yes, only a series of vertiginous comments that seem to lead nowhere. But Austerlitz is just as confused as to why he is drawn to all these subjects, and although he tries to undertand, he cannot, and 20 years later, after he begins to remember who he was, veils start to fall:

"....it has also become clearer to me of late why an agency greater than or superior to my own capacity for thought, which circumspectly directs operations somewhere in my brain, has always preserved me from my own secret, systematically preventing me from drawing the obvious conclusions and embarking on the inquiries they would have suggested to me."

Here's the crux of the story: the unconscious mind not just shunning memories too painful to be remembered, but also transmogrifying them into more bearable and yet related subjects, images, and memories. And everything Austerlitz tells us throughout the book relates to his shunned past. Halfway through the book, Austerlitz says:

"I had constantly been preoccupied with that accumulation of knowledge which I had pursued for decades, and which served as a substitute or compensatory memory."

And by the end of the book, the careful reader, making his own connections between the first part of the book and the second, realizes that all those seemingly disparate commentaries constituted that accumulated knowledge that Austerlitz had tried to use to compensate for his painful past.

Rating:
Summary: I can't believe this was published!
Review: My one regret with this book was finishing it. I should have put it down on page 2. Reviewers said it was beautifully written. I can't believe they read it. The sentences were run-on (one sentence lasted 4 pages!!). There were no paragraphs even when the entire subject changed (searching for father rather than mother.) Amazing. I suppose the editors went to sleep on this one. Must one write poorly to show a particular train of thought or theme? I don't think so.

I definitely wouldn't buy this book and I definitely won't read the previous books by Sebald. I don't know if the translation was poor or the initial writing. But. . . you undertake this task at great risk.

I'm an avid reader of all kinds of fiction and nonfiction, and I've never written a negative review. But, I decided to share my thoughts this time to save an unknowing reader from this extremely frustrating read.

Rating:
Summary: Enchanting and haunting
Review: I rarely read a book through at one sitting but the late W.G. Sebald's masterpiece "Austerlitz" had me spellbound. From the opening pages to the inspiring conclusion Sebald takes us through a never-ending journey of love, loneliness, reflection and wonder.

Austerlitz is a man of compelling complexity and through Sebald's bold and engaging writing one gets a sense of traversing time as Austerlitz sets about to find his roots. Nineteenth and twentieth centuries are skillfully blended. I rather like his use of long, descriptive sentences, giving this book a linear quality that keeps the reader pressing forward, as if the conquest is really to find our own roots. The black and white photos enhance the color with which Sebald tells his tale.

Much has been written about the book's slow start. I didn't find that to be a problem and in fact I think it helped propel the desire to find out more about Austerlitz. Clearly, though, this book picks up steam as the focus on Austerlitz becomes sharper and more defined.

If you have but one book to read this year, this one is the one.

Rating:
Summary: Read it in one sitting
Review: This is a book to read in one go, in total privacy and quiet and plenty of time. I had all three and am heartily glad. It takes plenty of concentration, immersion even.

Sebald assumes his reader is intelligent with a good memory, he explains things just once and relies on you to understand it and remember it at the right time. What a treat!

The long sentences and paragraphs aren't at all difficult, which is extraordinary since they were written in German and translated. Hats off to both writer and translator. They build up as you go to a beautiful rhythm, though I suspected they'd lost something from the original German.

Unfortunately the edition I read didn't translate any of the non-German (French, Czech); with my schoolgirl French and non-existent Czech, I hope I didn't miss some important stuff.

The passage about the nature of time was breathtaking, summing up the swirling eddies of the book's structure. The way he layers time upon time, memory upon memory, each echoing and amplifying each other. Sigh. I really felt it couldn't be fiction; was it? Probably. He's just that good a writer.

The section on writer's block was bleak, it seemed it came from personal experience, how words and sentences were stripped of their meaning.

I don't think I've read many books with that much impact, so much substance and so much incredible skill. Other writers could take one of the ideas and write a whole book.

I will definitely reread it several times as I'm sure much of its subtlety will reveal itself more fully.

I honestly can't think of anything I've read lately that's better.

Rating:
Summary: Well
Review: I must say this was one of the most painful reading experiences that I have endured yet. As one reviewer writes, there is a wonderful story in there somewhere, however, it is completely veiled in the taxing and obfuscated style Mr. Sebald uses.

I found the lengthy paragraphs and lack of sections annoying, but I do not find that to be a high crime of literature. But, having three (at least) independent narrators all tell stories in the first person without any clarifying identifiers or landmarks is simply preposterous. I found myself continually looking back as I wondered: "Which is this one now?"

Hearing great things about Mr. Sebald (and seeing him lauded by Susan Sontag) I was compelled to drive through to the end, hoping that Mr. Sebald would reward me for my arduous journey through this complex and harrowing tapestry he had wrought.

Does it end?

Unless you very much prefer style over story, avoid this one.