THE MAN WHO SAW EVERYTHING by Deborah Levy

5.5
❤❤❤❤❤

Bloomsbury
Publishing date October 15, 2019

Description

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 sister, a Beatles fanatic who will be his host, Saul's girlfriend will shoot a photograph of him standing in the crosswalk on Abbey Road, an homage to the famous album cover. As he waits for her to arrive, he is grazed by an oncoming car, which changes the trajectory of his life.

The Man Who Saw Everything is about the difficulty of seeing ourselves and others clearly. It greets the specters that come back to haunt old and new love, previous and current incarnations of Europe, conscious and unconscious transgressions, and real and imagined betrayals, while investigating the cyclic nature of history and its reinvention by people in power. Here, Levy traverses the vast reaches of the human imagination while artfully blurring sexual and political binaries-feminine and masculine.

My thoughts

"It's like this, Saul Adler: when I was twenty-three I loved the way you touched me, but when the afternoon slipped in and you slipped out of me, you were already looking for someone else. No, it's like this, Jennifer Moreau I loved you every night and every day, but you were scared of my love and I was scared of my love too. No, she said, I was scared of your envy which was bigger than your love.
Attention Saul Adler. Attention! Look to the left and to the right, cross the road and get to the other side."

Saul Adler proposed to Jennifer before leaving London for East Germany, Jennifer rebuffed Saul.

Saul Adler is the man who saw everyting.
Saul a professor teaching history at university in London, is on his way to East Germany in order to learn first hand how it's citizens faired since the Wall went up. The year is 1988, the wall separates East Germany from West Germany. Saul is 28.
When he arrives he noticed the stark difference between East and West...something he was well aware of, after all he is a professor, a historian.

This is a difficult book to review without giving away to much.
As others mentioned, readers used to stories with clear beginings and ends might find this novel confusing. I would disagree, yes it does read like a puzzle, however in Deborah Levy's hands it is beautifully executed.

The writing is beautiful, filled with love, heartache, hope. 

Deborah Levy, deserves the Booker Prize for this novel, having been nominated a few days ago on the long list. 

Yes read it

Thank you Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley

ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN by Lisa See

Scribner
My copy

Description

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger.

Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.

This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Womenintroduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.