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The Man Who Saw Everything

Deborah Levy

3.83 · Rating details · 1,704 ratings · 357 reviews

An electrifying novel about beauty, envy, and carelessness from Deborah Levy, author of the Booker Prize finalists Hot Milk and Swimming Home.

It is 1988 and Saul Adler, a narcissistic young historian, has been invited to Communist East Berlin to do research; in exchange, he must publish a favorable essay about the German Democratic Republic. As a gift for his translator's ...more

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Hardcover, 199 pages

Published October 15th 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing (first published August 29th 2019)

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May 25, 2019 Paromjit rated it really liked it

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 ...more

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Nov 15, 2019 Adam Dalva rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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May 23, 2019 Elyse (semi hiatus) Walters rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Jun 20, 2019 Meike rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-read, 2019-booker, uk

Nominated for the Booker Prize 2019
Nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize 2019
Deborah 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 Nominated for the Booker Prize 2019
Nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize 2019
Deborah 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 one year later...

...which brings us to the narrative concept. This is a book in two parts, and both start with Saul being hit by a car on Abbey Road while trying to cross the street on the famous zebra crossing. Saul crashes into the wing mirror, which shatters, its reflective glass entering his head: "I had gazed at my reflection in his wing mirror and my reflection had fallen into me." In part 1 of the book, the events described above occur after the accident, but in part 2, it's 2016, and Saul has to be hospitalized and undergoes surgerey. Suffering from sepsis and drugged with morphine, all his memories, the reflections of himself and others, are still there, but they are shattered, and Saul is struggling to put them back together. He conflates people and scenes, lead by feelings and perceived similarities and connections, but those around him correct his efforts again and again with their own subjective views. (I have experienced a situation where one of my relatives suffered a head injury followed by major surgery and sepsis, and I feel like their mental state of trying to re-connect the dots after waking from a coma is extremely well renderd by Levy.) Saul tries to remember what happened with him and Jennifer, what he experienced in Berlin almost 30 years ago, and the repercussions of these events, thus questioning part 1.

Throughout the whole book, Levy works with the term "spectre" which seems to signify the subjective meaning, feelings and associations that become attached to people and events in our minds and memories, profoundly and often sub-consciously shaping our perception. These spectres are also used to connect people and events in Saul's life after the accident. The family of Saul's Jewish mother had to flee Nazi Germany, his father is part of the struggling British working class. So did his mother flee the fascists and married a communist? Is the father an authoritarian figure just like the GDR is an authoritarian fatherland? Did Saul want to cut all ties with his working class background while the "worker's and peasant's state" was holding its citizens hostage? Did Jennifer, a photographer, really see him through her camera, and did his friends in the GDR really listen to him or were they just taking notes for the Stasi? In which timeline do those dogs, turtles, toy trains, cherry tree petals and funerals belong, and why can they time travel?

This book is fairly easy to read and to follow, but it is packed with little twists and riddles, the biggest of all possibly being who this Saul Adler actually is - we see more and more fragmentary reflections, and while many aspects of his personality come together, others remain ambiguous or even contradictory, but then again, our reflection in the mirror is never flawless. A beautiful, touching book about human connection and identity that - fingers crossed - will go on to win some prizes. ...more

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Apr 12, 2019 Gumble's Yard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019-booker-longlist, 2019, 2019-goldsmith-shortlist

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.
...more

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Oct 16, 2019 ☘Misericordia☘ ~ The Serendipity Aegis ~ ⚡ϟ⚡ϟ⚡⛈ ✺❂❤❣ rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: overrated, propaganda-fiction

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? ...more

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Jun 29, 2019 Doug rated it it was amazing

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 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 reaction to Saul's story also. It still sits atop my rankings of the nine Booker titles I've read so far, so am keeping fingers crossed it proceeds onto the shortlist and perhaps takes the prize.

PS ... I find it interesting that many reviews have erroneously pointed to Saul as the titular character... and in my second reading, I noted that twice Levy refers to Walter Müller as the man who saw everything... not sure what to make of that, but it does give one pause.

My sincere thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an advanced reading copy of this book, in exchange for this honest review.

I'm not quite sure why (or how) Levy has emerged as one of my favorite authors - I have now read almost everything she's ever published (the one exception being Diary of a Steak, which I finally tracked down a reasonably priced copy of, so will read soon, completest that I am). She never really repeats herself in either style or topics, but you can bet a Levy book is always carefully crafted, intriguingly obtuse, and each book almost demands multiple readings to parse out the hidden meanings.

Her latest tome is perhaps her most erudite and jam-packed box of tricks; a kaleidoscopic investigation of the fractured mind of protagonist Saul Adler, with two sections set in two different time frames (or are they?) - in 1988 the then 28 year old budding historian undergoes a minor accident while attempting to have his girlfriend Jennifer take a picture of him recreating the iconic Beatles Abbey Road album cover. Then, in 2016, the middle aged Adler seemingly has another, more serious accident, that splits his mind and memory into many fragments, calling into question everything that has gone before in the previous hundred pages.

I found myself racing through to find out what happens on a basic level, which perhaps does a disservice to how beautifully Levy weaves her various threads together, so fully intend to go back very soon and reread so that I can appreciate more fully her luminous language. I also expect this to garner as much praise and awards attention as her previous Hot Milk, and hope to see it make the Booker list this year, and perhaps walk away with the prize. If nothing else, it is guaranteed a spot on my top 5 of 2019. ...more

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Aug 02, 2019 Andrew Smith rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley

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 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 clipped by a car that fails to stop on the crossing and though he is not seriously hurt the incident is to have long term repercussions.

Once in Berlin, Adler soon has sexual interaction with his both male host and the female Beatle fan, Luna. It’s clear that Luna is hell bent on finding a way of leaving her restricted Communist existence and of travelling to Liverpool. There is the constant suspicion that they’re all being watched, so instead Saul soon escapes back to London. This first half of the book felt fragmented and slightly off-centre to me, I couldn’t settle to it at all. There just seemed to be something about it that didn’t quite add up.

In the second half the scene moves to London in 2016. Has there been a second road accident in the same spot? It isn’t clear to me, but Saul is now hospitalised and in his semi-conscious state he revisits events and relationships from the past. Certain figures reappear in the present and I begin to understand that everything here has not quite been what it seemed. As this short tale plays out I realise that there is now a completely different interpretation of events being dangled in front of me.

It’s a very cleverly told story, in part it’s frustrating (I came close to abandoning it early on) but it’s also an insightful commentary on sexuality, betrayal and on the games that memory can play. The conclusion to this book was, to me, ambiguous – perhaps intentionally so. Even so, and perhaps partly because of this, it’s a piece that has occupied my thoughts more than most books I’ve read in the past twelve months.

Levy is an author I’ve enjoyed before (Hot Milk and Swimming Home) and here she has again she’s provided something that is challenging and refreshingly different. My thanks to Penguin Books (UK) and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ...more

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Jul 27, 2019 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read2019, ebooks, netgalley, reviewcopy, booker-winners-and-listed

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 ...more

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Aug 31, 2019 Hugh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, read-2019, booker-longlist, goldsmiths

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2018
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2019

Deborah 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 Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2018
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2019

Deborah 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 wearing a white suit. He is there because his younger girlfriend Jennifer Moreau, a photographer, wants to take a picture of him there. He proceeds to Jennifer's shared house, and at the end of their encounter Saul proposes marriage and Jennifer announces that she wants to end the relationship.

In the next part of the book, Saul travels to East Berlin, where he has an affair with his married host Walter and also his sister Luna, who is obsessed with the Beatles and wants to leave Berlin and travel to Liverpool. Luna tries to persuade him to pay to have her smuggled out, but he chooses to attempt to persuade Walter to leave Berlin and East Germany instead.

The second half of the book takes place in 2016. It opens, almost identically, with a car crash on Abbey Road, in which the older Saul is seriously injured. The rest of the book sees him recapturing and reevaluating his memories in hospital - initially he has lost most of his post-1988 memory (for example his memory of his long term male partner is almost entirely lost, as is his memory of two later meetings with Walter). Most of his thoughts are still in communist East Berlin, and he places almost everyone he meets in that context. This section is undoubtedly very clever, but rather lacks the immediacy and narrative drive of the first part.

As always the writing is fine, and overall I found the book interesting and stimulating, without ever really getting a feeling for what the overall point is. I would be happy to see this book on the Booker shortlist, but I remain to be convinced that it is a potential winner. ...more

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Sep 03, 2019 Collin rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Apr 19, 2019 Paul Fulcher rated it really liked it

Shelves: booker-2019, goldsmiths-2019, 2019, net-galley

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 ...more

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Apr 18, 2019 Neil rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-top-books, netgalley, 2019-goldsmiths, 5-stars, 2019-booker, 2019

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 ...more

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Aug 31, 2019 Marchpane rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019

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 ...more

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Oct 14, 2019 Pedro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Aug 11, 2019 Peter Boyle rated it liked it

Shelves: booker-nominee

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 ...more

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Nov 09, 2019 Rachel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: published-in-2019, booker-2019, 2019, literary-fiction, arc

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 ...more

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Aug 06, 2019 Roman Clodia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 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 the family and the pearls did not help'), about what can be said and not said, about state surveillance and intimate looking, about language and translations, about doubleness and loneliness.

This is perhaps the most accessible of Levy's novels that I've read but it also requires a kind of decoding: this is a book that those of us who love classic 'close reading' can throw ourselves into joyously - in fact, it operates like poetry, not in terms of word choices but in the way words are resonant, echoing and reverberating, sometimes with different meanings ('"I did wear a tie in the GDR," I recollected. "I wore a tie when I visited Walter in Berlin last year. Before Britain set about untying its ties with Europe."')

There's a symbolic substructure that is the foundation upon which the story is built: spectres and ghosts, mirrors and glass, the jaguar (so clever!), the 'little coffins' that are cakes (a memory of Proust?) but also something more emotionally wrenching. There are times when Levy is a little too heavy-handed: the equations between an authoritarian communist father and Stalin/Eastern bloc rulers, the figuring of masculinity as a wall (a boundary which polices what is allowed to go in and out, which separates and confines - but which can also be breached or come down, like the Berlin wall in the story).

Reading this feels easy and natural but it's a tight and carefully composed piece which rewards an attentive reading. Clever without being clever-clever, I'll be very interested to see how this does in the 2019 Booker.

Thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley. ...more

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Aug 04, 2019 Canadian rated it liked it

Shelves: read-in-2019, literary-fiction

(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 (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 private research project closer to home about the psychology of male tyrants, and he is preoccupied with the totalitarian currents in his own family. He has strained relationships with his father, who has long been committed to the socialist cause, and his brother, Matthew, whom Saul describes as the preferred son, a “Bolshevik hero”, and a bully.

Before he leaves London, Saul’s ambitious art-student/photographer girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau, is scheduled to take a photograph of him at the famous zebra crossing on Abbey Road. Jennifer will attempt to replicate the iconic cover of the Beatles’ 1969 album in a photograph that will be presented as a gift to the Beatles-obsessed sister of Saul’s East German interpreter. We are told that while Saul waits on the famous street for Jennifer to arrive with her camera and gear, he is hit by a car. Although there’s some blood and bruising, his injuries are apparently minor. The photograph is taken, a parting amorous episode between Saul and Jennifer transpires, a marriage proposal is rejected, and Saul goes on his way to the German Democratic Republic, where he proceeds to fall in love with his interpreter.

The first half of Levy’s inventive and allusive novel reads rather strangely. Because of the novel’s epigraph—a quotation from Susan Sontag about the ways in which photography violates its human subjects, as it presents them as they never know and see themselves— and because Jennifer refers to Saul as her “muse” and forbids him to describe her physical beauty, I was under the impression that Levy was aiming to subvert stereotypes about women and art—those in which the female is the object for the male creator to “symbolically possess”. Levy suggests that even though Saul and Jennifer are lovers, Jennifer isn’t interested in Saul as a person; his striking appearance is useful to her —a commodity to be exploited. In the end, though, this theme is a secondary one. Jennifer is not Levy’s main interest; although important to the story, she’s not its focus. Instead, Saul’s curious, occasionally surreal experiences on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall take centre stage. There are odd, inexplicable elements to this part of the story, and Saul’s thinking and behaviour are often puzzling. He is paradoxically highly observant and peculiarly obtuse.

If the first half of the novel is a kind of rich but strange tapestry, the second half exposes how that material came to be woven. The narrative now becomes propulsive as the reader learns what the threads actually consist of and how they’ve been interlaced to create a particular, deceptive picture. The strangeness of the first half of the book becomes understandable. This makes for very satisfying reading, and I mostly admired Levy’s skill and cleverness. At the same time, I felt there was something lacking in her depiction of Saul’s psychology and conflicts. His strained relationships with his father and brother and an early, formative loss are not convincingly explained. Some of the dialogue is a bit too mannered, and there’s a slightly soap-opera-ish feel to this part of the book. For these reasons, I’ve rounded my rating down rather than up.

Thank you to Net Galley and Penguin Random House of Canada for providing me with a digital ARC of this book. ...more

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Jun 28, 2019 Lee rated it liked it

(3.5) Charming and funny but possibly more slight than it imagines it is and perhaps a bit cute.

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Oct 11, 2019 But_i_thought_ rated it really liked it

Shelves: experimental, contemporary-fiction, man-booker-nominees, goldsmiths-prize

It is London, the year 1988. Saul Adler, a 28-year-old historian, is grazed by a car while attempting to cross Abbey Road, a street made famous by the Beatles’ breakup album cover. The driver’s wing mirror is shattered during the accident. But why does the driver, stepping out to apologize, possess a device that resembles a cellphone (this being the 80s)? And why does he doubt Adler’s age? Moreover, why is the driver interested in Adler’s profession and the age of his girlfriend?

So begins Levy’s It is London, the year 1988. Saul Adler, a 28-year-old historian, is grazed by a car while attempting to cross Abbey Road, a street made famous by the Beatles’ breakup album cover. The driver’s wing mirror is shattered during the accident. But why does the driver, stepping out to apologize, possess a device that resembles a cellphone (this being the 80s)? And why does he doubt Adler’s age? Moreover, why is the driver interested in Adler’s profession and the age of his girlfriend?

So begins Levy’s book, published on the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Abbey Road photo shoot. On the surface, we follow a straightforward story of a self-involved British historian, a minor car accident and a research trip to East Berlin before the fall of the Wall. But sprinkled here and there are little glitches in the “matrix” that don’t quite add up. Adler is haunted by recurring objects — a tin of pineapple, a string of pearls, a jaguar, a toy train and a cherry tree with pink blossoms. He hears the sound of typing in his head. Images and impressions from another time, another place, embed themselves in his brain. The key to the puzzle is hidden in plain sight.

In form, the novel resembles the shattered glass of the driver’s wing mirror — it is splintered, fractured, uneven, overlapping — creating the portrait of a “man in pieces”. Some of these pieces fit together better than others. Others are missing entirely. As a result, the book only truly comes alive on second reading. (Take the Beatles hit “Penny Lane”, for example, which Adler hums. The lyrics of the song, when consulted, mention a barber, a banker with a motorcar and a pretty nurse — all characters which appear in the novel.)

Not only does Levy thwart conventional narrative, she also takes a sledgehammer to the binaries that define us, the walls that divide us — male versus female, gay versus straight, then versus now, here versus there. In doing so, she gives us a Möbius strip of a novel, with a shot of Murakami dream logic and a pinch of the supernatural.

She also gives us a note of hope. If history is cyclical, our current political divide is but a temporary glitch. When in 1988 Adler predicts the fall of the Berlin Wall, his East German peers dismiss his prediction as lies. They cannot imagine a united Germany. It is only with the lens of the historian that we can see the world clearly. And it is only when we remove ourselves from the noise of the present that we can anticipate tides of change. I hope Levy is right.

Mood: Surreal
Rating: 8.5/10

Also on Instagram. ...more

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Sep 01, 2019 Anna Luce rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: readers who enjoy Rachel Cusk, Jeanette Winterson, Yukio Mishima, or Samuel Beckett's plays

Shelves: library, 2019-reviews, disappointing-reads, lukewarm-reads

3 all bark no bite stars

For readers in want of an incisive and creative account of life in East Germany, I strongly recommend picking up something by Christa Wolf.
I think that from now on I might stick to Deborah Levy's non-fiction.

While I'm glad to see that many of my friends and other readers were able to enjoy this latest release by Deborah Levy, I found it to be yet another example of all flash no substance.

There is little to no depth or feeling in the story and characters of this ★★★✰✰ 3 all bark no bite stars

For readers in want of an incisive and creative account of life in East Germany, I strongly recommend picking up something by Christa Wolf.
I think that from now on I might stick to Deborah Levy's non-fiction.

While I'm glad to see that many of my friends and other readers were able to enjoy this latest release by Deborah Levy, I found it to be yet another example of all flash no substance.

There is little to no depth or feeling in the story and characters of this relatively short book, but rather an intentionally oblique narrative that time and again chooses style over substance.

To me, it seemed that the way the story was being told was all that mattered. And I admit that occasionally I found Levy's use of repetition to be clever; these recurring word-plays, dialogues, and images did give a rhythm to the narrative and could occasionally serve as comedic relief. In those instances the novel reminded me of the verbose and sardonic style of Muriel Spark but for the most part I was irked by the novel's own self-awareness at its own irony. This short novel could have benefited from being even shorter...but I guess then it wouldn't have been longlisted for the booker prize.

In spite of what its title may suggest, the protagonist of The Man Who Saw Everything presents readers with a myopic narrative that deliberately misinterprets the people and events in his own life. The author has created an intentionally disjointed, and occasionally feverish, narrative at the expenses of its own main character whose role is soon apparent as being that of the Fool. His poor judgement and general lack of direction result in a series of would-be-humorous incidents in which he often embarrasses, and even mortifies, himself to others. Later on the paranoia pervading Saul Adler's mind skewers his view of others so that potentially emotional scenes are negated by his fragmented narrative.
What is also of notice is that the structure of this novel disregards time's linearity. In Beckett-like-fashion the author neglects to explain the construction of her novel or to clarify why certain events unfold in such a particular way. Although readers are not as in the dark as Saul Adler, we still have to puzzle out why the story is arranged in such a manner.
To begin with, I tried to extrapolate some sort of meaning or reason for this increasingly bizarre narrative but I soon gave up. One could easily attribute any sort of meaning for the idiosyncratic arrangement of this narrative without reaching any real conclusion.
Much of the weirdness of The Man Who Saw Everything seemed calculated to me, weird merely for the sake of being weird. Perhaps other readers will be able to immerse themselves in the narrative, but I, in all honesty, mostly perceived a degree of artificiality in the way the story was being told that exasperated me.
Because of this I never believed in the story or its characters. Our main character seemed so conveniently blind-sighted as to seem a mere caricature of the type of vain and solipsistic man who self-fashions himself as the wronged and alienated hero of his own story. His unreliability is apparent from the very first page, which is the likely reason why I wasn't all that surprised by the revelation that we should not take for granted his descriptions and recollections of others.
The Man Who Saw Everything struck me more as a clever performance on the part of the writer, a studied demonstration of her writing's skill, of her ability to 'trick' her readers, then an actual book with a story worth telling.

Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads ...more

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Jul 29, 2019 Anita Pomerantz rated it it was amazing

Review to follow, but I will say for sure that this book won't be everyone's cup of tea. But I love Levy, and this book was no exception. It's not at all science fiction, but it evoked a lot of the same feelings I had when I watched the movie, Inception, in the sense that the reader is not spoon fed a plot.

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UPDATED thoughts:

This book blows my mind. Levy is a rare talent, and here she plays with structure and an unreliable narrator while still using straightforward, accessible prose ...more

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Aug 31, 2019 Jerrie (redwritinghood) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Levy is kinda brilliant. This sly, subtle novel is ultimately about human connection and how one can “see” and remember another person or situation. The MC Saul is very focused on his own outer beauty, and never really connects with those around him. This observation is frequently mixed with references to mirrors and photos, which can capture an image without really conveying much of what’s behind it. Cracked mirrors and cut up photos show how perceptions can be distorted, much like Saul’s ...more

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Nov 30, 2019 Trudie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-19

Meh ... this never really engaged me but I did like the writing. Give me Rushdie over this one any day ;)

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Oct 21, 2019 Alex rated it really liked it

I'm not sure what just happened but it felt kind of wonderful going along for the ride.

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Nov 27, 2019 David rated it really liked it

The writing (as always with Levy) is very good and the structure quite interesting. Reading this is a bit like watching someone else assemble a jigsaw puzzle in a manner that is as obscure as the picture unfolding.

If I had cared more about Saul Adler - or Jennifer or Luna or just about every other character - I would have appreciated what Levy is doing here to a greater extent. As it was, this became more of an intellectual enterprise than a true reading pleasure. The Cemetery in Barnes handles ...more

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Jun 27, 2019 Sarah rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley, fiction, booker-2019

2.5 rounded up

I'm a massive fan of Deborah Levy's nonfiction but her fiction seems to miss the mark in terms of what I look for in a novel. The Man Who Saw Everything opens with our protagonist, Saul, at Abbey Road, his girlfriend taking a photo of him at the infamous zebra crossing. The story then jumps around between locations and time frames a lot which I found pretty confusing and disorientating for the first 50%. Levy (just about) pulls it off in the end thanks to her deft way with words, ...more

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Jul 23, 2019 Jaclyn Crupi rated it really liked it

Reading this as the Booker Prize longlist was announced and I can completely see how it made the cut. I’m loving all the Levy love! This was also weirdly perfect reading after seeing the film Yesterday on Monday night.

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Sep 01, 2019 Andreas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-stars, 2019, booker-prize-longlist-2019

This was brilliant! An elegant, elegiac and introspective novel about a man's life and relationships.

It's a shame that this wasn't shortlisted for the Booker but it should go on to win other major prizes in the Anglophone world.

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About Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy

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Deborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, highly acclaimed for their "intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination", including PAX, HERESIES for the Royal Shakespeare Company, CLAM, CALL BLUE JANE, SHINY NYLON, HONEY BABY MIDDLE ENGLAND, PUSHING THE PRINCE INTO DENMARK and MACBETH-FALSE MEMORIES, some of which are published in ...more

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“I had lost my job. I was no longer officially a minor historian. Perhaps I was history itself, flailing around in a number of directions, sometimes all of them at the same time.” — 0 likes

“I wasn’t in the mood to talk. The mournful sound of the rubber wheels of the tea trolley squeaking on the lino floor was the right soundtrack for the end of the world. Sometimes the tea lady lost her grip and the trolley hit the corners of the walls and beds. It was the equivalent of waterfalls and parrots in my new terrible world.” — 0 likes

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