For the first half of The Man Who Saw Everything , I was hooked. It’s the 80s, and beautiful Saul and peevish Jennifer have just broken up, prior to Saul’s research trip to East Berlin. Why does Saul hear a typewriter hammering in his head? What is the significance of Abbey Road? It seems like Saul can predict the future?This enigmatic, intriguing story, with dialogue just slightly off-kilter, repeating motifs, and oneiric inconsistencies was so alluring, and I dutifully gobbled up Levy’s bai...

I loved this novel - it is impossible to explain WHY it is good without spoiling it, which I worry will deflate readerly expectation. The first 98 pages are a very good, slightly surreal novel about Saul Adler, a beautiful young man who travels to East Berlin and falls in unexpected love. The last 102 pages are incredibly ambitious and incredibly good - they turn every scene in the first half of the novel on their heads, complicate it, and explain it. Think TRUST EXERCISE mixed with Cusk - seek

This doesn't come out in the states until October but this might be the book that finally wins Deborah Levy her Man Booker Prize! I love how it starts as one kind of novel and then plays with expectations, while the writing is still able to resonate deeply with the reader. This is a novel to be experienced so don't read a lot about it, just read it. I did get early access from the publisher through NetGalley after someone at NG helped me with a file issue, but even though this is on the MB longl...

Now unsurprisingly shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize - perhaps a better fit for this brilliant book than the Booker Prize.Re-read following its longlisting for the 2019 Booker Prize and upgraded twice to 5* as this is a book which relays multiple re-reads and has proved to be the most enigmatic and thought provoking on the longlist. In three days I was travelling to East Germany, the GDR, to research cultural opposition to the rise of fascism in the 1930s at the Humboldt University. Al...

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 BOOKER PRIZE.Saul Adler is more shocked than bewildered when his girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau, not only flatly turns down his marriage proposal, but tells him that they are finished and that he can grab his stuff and leave. Here we get a glimpse of the prose that will follow, “because my marriage proposal had sunk to the bottom of the sea. I was shipwrecked amongst the empty oyster shells with their jagged sharp edges and I could taste Jennifer Moreau on my fingers and lip...

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2018Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2019Deborah Levy's books are often a little difficult to decode, and I found this one a bit of a struggle, not least because I struggled to find much sympathy for the narrator Saul Adler. In the first half of the book we meet him in 1988 in his late 20s - he is a university lecturer who specialises in studying Eastern European communist regimes. He is hit by a car while crossing the famous zebra crossing on Abbey Road weari...

Simply put, one of the most rewarding reading experiences I’ve ever had. I think it’s best to approach this book while knowing as little as possible about it, so I’m not really going to talk about the plot. Instead I’ll just say that this book is like Penelope’s tapestry; Levy weaves a brilliant tale in the first act, only to unweave it halfway through and then stitch it back together, and she does it carefully without sacrificing either the details or the big picture.It’s arguably easier to tal...

On the Booker Longlist!For those readers who need to be on sure and certain ground in their reading, this latest Deborah Levy novel is not for them. Levy makes few compromises here, she raises many questions and more often than not declines to provide any answers, there are nebulous, fragmented, uncertain and unreliable realities, memories and history. In 1988 a young self obsessed Jewish historian, Saul Adler, is hit by a car on the Abbey Road, the iconic Abbey Road that the Beatles are photogr...

Nominated for the Booker Prize 2019Nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize 2019Deborah Levy's new novel certainly tells a captivating story, but what makes this book so fantastic is her smashing (ha!) narrative concept. Our narrator is Saul, a British historian and expert on Eastern European communism. After his girlfriend Jennifer breaks up with him, 28-year-old Saul travels to the GDR as part of his research. It's 1988, but mysteriously, Saul already seems to know that the wall will come down only

Update Aug. 11: Since my ARC disappears in a week, and now that (I am delighted to say) it HAS made the Booker longlist, I wanted to re-read it and see if it held up as well as in my initial read, and also see if I could glean even more meaning on a second go-round. Reading it more or less in a single sitting, and with some foreknowledge of what transpires did help me to ferret out some additional connections and resonances I missed the first time through, and I also had more of an emotional rea...

Now, deservedly, longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize‘Hello, Saul. How’s it going?’‘I’m trying to cross the road,’ I replied. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’ve been trying to cross the road for thirty years but stuff happened on the way.’The Beatles album Abbey Road (the recording sessions for which were the last in which all four participated) famously has on its cover no words but just a photograph, taken in August 1969, of the fab four crossing a zebra-crossing outside the EMI Studios in the road of t...

Now re-read as publication day approaches and after its inclusion on the Booker Prize longlist.If I were to create a list of books that require (not just deserve) a second reading, I think I would put this one at the top. On my first reading, I highlighted several passages as I saw them refer back to earlier parts of the book, but, of course, I could not look in the other direction. On a second read, I was able to use my knowledge of the book to look forwards and the number of highlights rose dr...

Well done, Deborah Levy, on cramming so much thoughtful stuff into such a relatively short book: in little more than 200pp she makes us think about reflections and connections, about time and space, about history and its formation, about families and love affairs, about death and living, about Europe and its divisions, about spectres that haunt from the future (Marx's 'there is a spectre haunting Europe') and from the past, about gender and its porosity ('he told me I was the Marie Antoinette of...

I was intrigued and puzzled from the very first paragraph beginning in London, 1988.Saul Adler says:“I was thinking about how Jennifer Moreau had told me I was never to describe her beauty, not to her, or to anyone else. When I asked her why I was silenced in this way, she said, ‘Because you only have old words to describe me.’ This was on my mind when I stepped onto the zebra crossing with it’s black-and-white stripes at which all vehicles must stop to allow pedestrians to cross the road. A car...

It’s London in 1988 and Saul Adler, a Jewish historian, is preparing for a visit to East Berlin. He’s been invited to visit the GDR on the understanding that he’ll write a glowing paper on the economic miracle he finds there. As a gift for the sister of his German host, who is known to be infatuated with the Beatles, he’s asked his photographer girlfriend to take a picture of him crossing Abbey Road, as John, Paul, Ringo and George had done on the cover of their legendary album. But Saul is clip...

This is such a clever book. Though at times the plot was so elusive I couldn't help find it frustrating. I'm sure I missed certain motifs and allusions but on the whole, it was an enjoyable read.The story begins in 1988. Saul Adler is our protagonist, a handsome 28-year-old historian. On his way to meet his girlfriend Jennifer, he is hit by a car on Abbey Road, but apparently left unscathed. He proposes to Jennifer - instead she breaks up with him. A little glum, Saul travels to Berlin so that h...

Had I read this book ten years ago, I’m sure I would have hated it. But this is 2019, and not 2009, and I ended up really liking this story. For the first couple of pages, and because this was my introduction to Levy’s writing I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought this was going to be a straightforward read. Man meets woman, they fall in love, etc. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. This was as far from straightforward as you can get. Metaphors and symbolism everywhere and in everyt...

(3.5) It’s best to read this book cold, not primed by reviews that provide too much information about the plot, so I’m going to give only the barest of details. The narrative revolves around the apparently surpassingly beautiful and self-absorbed Saul Adler, a 28-year-old graduate student in history. As the novel opens, it is 1988, and he is preparing to travel to the German Democratic Republic to conduct research on cultural opposition to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. However, he has a priv...

So, this is a novel about how some people need to be more careful crossing roads. Basically, that's all. The rest is pointless meandering between locations, times, discussions between some random characters who do nothing for the plot, oh, yeah - there's no plot to do anything for! How convenient! There was supposed to be some mystery somewhere and it was about as undewhelming as to be absolutely invisible. No, I found one mystery about it - why was this paragon of averageness rated so highly? N...

Booker Prize Longlist 2019. Saul Adler is literally the Man-In-Pieces, his former girlfriend’s stunning portrait of Saul broken into fragments. Levy’s cleverly written book is filled with circular timelines and ironic metaphors. For instance, Saul is hit by a 1968 Jaguar crossing London’s Abbey Road once in 1988 and again in 2016—both times by a man named Wolfgang. He is barely injured the first time, but develops a dangerous sepsis on the second occurrence. The sepsis causes him to lose his mem...