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 talk about this book’s themes than its actual plot, but I don’t want to suggest that my interpretation is the be all end all, because this is the sort of book that lends itself to discussions and contradictions. Above all else this is book is about memory – are we more than our memories, or are our memories all we are – but what also stuck out to me was Levy’s deft meditation on what it means to age, what it means to live as a foreigner abroad, what it means to love, what it means to be a part of a culture’s shifting landscape. It seems like a tall order to balance all of this in just under 200 pages while also prioritizing structural innovation, but this book is a case of form and content coming together perfectly. I wouldn’t change a single page – a single sentence – of this book, and I cannot say that often.

That said, I understand why this hasn’t worked for some readers, especially those who err on the side of more traditional storytelling, but for anyone who’s willing to take a risk, and willing to stumble blindly through the dark at times, you can rest easy with the confidence that Levy knows exactly what she is doing here. I can say with absolute confidence that I am going to reread this at some point, and I’m sure I’ll find it even more revelatory when I do.

My Thoughts: The Man Who Saw Everything begins in September 1988 on Abbey Road in London, where Saul Alder is hit by a car while preparing have a photo taken of himself crossing the zebra crossing as a tribute to the famous Beatles album. From there the story began to flow in and out of being clear to me. Saul traveled to East Germany to do some work on his Phd., and while there seemed to be aware of detailed circumstances of the Berlin wall falling three years later. Time and again, I was confused by time frames that weren’t adding up. While this was a bit off-putting, I continued to be curious enough to read further. Saul himself was a very compelling character. Finally, just before the halfway mark, an event occurred that made everything else clear. From then on, I more easily pieced together Saul Alder’s life and very much appreciated the creative storytelling delivered by Deborah Levy. The novel itself was quite literary and I don’t think it will work for everyone, but in the end, I was very glad I read it.

Levy's The Man Who Saw Everything will not be for everyone, I'm not even sure if was for me.  However, t was easy read with right at 200 pages, but took me forever to finish.  I considered abandoning it several times. 

And here I am trying to write this review when I'm not sure I get the point of the novel, nor do I understand what just happened.

The Man Who Saw Everything is a clever book which I will probably read again to pick up on the hidden gems. Ms. Levy uses an unreliable narrator, and twists the time lines to tell her story. I liked the way she used the second half of the book to call into question everything I thought I knew from reading the first half of the book. However, I must admit, I found myself confused too often. I didn't fully connect with the main character and that hurt my ability to fall in love with the reading experience.

I am a big fan of the Beatles and absolutely loved the little thread about the Abbey Road album and its cover. When I was in high school (in the late 1970s) I could have told you every detail of this cover and the lore surrounding it. This book made me feel reminiscent and nostalgic. I don't think this part of the story was most important, but it was my favorite nonetheless.

The writing style is very good. The history is interesting and the research is thorough. For all of this I am giving the book 4 stars. However if I rated on enjoyment and connection only, I would have given it only 3.

Thanks to Netgalley, Bloomsbury USA and the author for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is one of those books that you are either going to love or hate, there is no in-between. I really enjoyed it and found the internal struggles faced to be well-written. The author has a gift for writing flawed, but redeemable characters.

London 1988, Saul Adler is a 28 year old Jewish historian. He is invited to East Germany, the GDR to do research. For the opportunity, he is to write a complementary article.
He will be staying with his translator Walter Muller and his sister Luna and their mother.
He is asked to bring a tin of pineapple and since Luna is a big Beatles fan, he wants to recreate the album cover crossing Abbey Road in a photograph for her. His girlfriend Jennifer is to meet him there and take the picture.
While he waits, he walks across the zebra crossing and is hit by a car. He has only minor injuries and when Jennifer arrives she notices blood, but is able to get the shot.
They go to her house afterwards and have sex. He proposes to her, but she turns him down and breaks up with him. Since Saul is so self involved, he is shocked when she does.
He goes off to Germany and has sex with both Walter and Luna, but he falls in love only with Walter.
Then the book shifts to 2016, where Saul is again hit by a car crossing Abbey Road. This time he is badly injured and develops sepsis. He is visited by his family and friends at the hospital and begins to hallucinate.
The story is very enigmatic, the characters are not very likable.
There is a lot of symbolism and allusions, making it seem very dreamlike.
I think most of it went over my head. I prefer a more substantial story with people I feel concerned about.
Even though it was not for me, I appreciate the opportunity to have read it.
Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for the e-ARC via NetGalley.

In the twilight years of the Soviet Union, young historian Saul travels to East Berlin to conduct research, but a chance car accident knocks his life, and mental state, off kilter.

Levy puts readers through a wringer of tedium for the first half of the Booker-longlisted The Man Who Saw Everything. The prose of the whole novel kind of lies on its side, but no more so than in the early, monotonous descriptions of Saul's daily activities and conversations. Surprising, then, that the book bounces back once the veil is lifted and the story's timeline becomes clearer; or does it? Forgive me for being vague, but this really is the kind of book you ought to go into knowing little. Ultimately the kind of literary puzzle you're happy to attempt at solving. Just stick with it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the ARC in exchange for this review.

Tracy’s Thoughts: Deborah Levy is becoming a favorite author for me- she consistently writes a story that is a challenge that I’m willing to take on, and love the ride. This one was no exception.

Once again, an unreliable narrator, but this one wasn’t trying to be unreliable. That had to be hard to write- but Levy made it look easy. This touched on many parts of the human experience- love, loss, and memory foremost.

I could easily go back and reread this one. I think there will be something new in each reading.

When I requested this book, I didn’t know it wasn’t available on Kindle. I’ve tried everything to access it in the format it appears in but I can’t get it to work. Very disappointed as Deborah Levy is a favorite of mine and I was looking forward to this one. If a Kindle version becomes available, I’d love to receive it.

Deborah Levy is a shape-shifter. Her work can seem concrete or conceptual, her preoccupations sometimes easy to share, sometimes more abstract. With her latest novel, she turns her attention to life, time, memory, truth, in a thrillingly intangible fashion. Her book spans an existence, but in a non-linear and initially perplexing manner.

It all begins at that famous zebra crossing in Abbey Road, London, in 1988, when a young man named Saul Adler bends to his girlfriend Jennifer Moreau’s will and allows himself to be photographed on the crossing, dressed up like John Lennon. The event does not pass without incident. Firstly, Saul is knocked down by a car. His injuries are only glancing, allowing the couple to go back to her place and make love. But then Saul proposes to Jennifer, and not only does she reject him but she ends the relationship too.

Saul’s work is in historical research and he’s about to make a visit to East Berlin. There he will fall in love with a translator, Walter Müller. But he will also sleep with Walter’s sister Luna, and swim in a lake with an acquaintance of Walter’s who bears a strange likeness to the man who knocked Saul down in Abbey Road.

As the story deepens, so perturbing echoes and glimpses of other, possibly future or slightly altered places, people and scenes occur. The reader, while engaged with Saul, his love life and actions, struggles to keep a sense of mental order. But then history repeats itself, and Saul is knocked down in Abbey Road all over again.

No, it’s not Groundhog Day. Yes, there are repetitions and do-overs, but Levy is attempting something different, something simultaneously disconcerting and lucid, comic and deadly serious. While the author reveals herself to be in calm control of her characters and their overlapping lives, she leaves it up to the reader to reach some conclusions, notably on the question of Saul, the freakishly beautiful man of shifting sexual identity and moral strength.

Levy covers a lot of ground here – philosophical, historical, personal – but lightly and empathetically. Her novel, while ambitious, is intricate and deft. There’s a moment in Berlin when Saul’s attention is snagged by a copper relief on a wall. It’s entitled “Man Overcomes Space and Time” and that’s Levy’s achievement in her daring new work.

Levy wrote an interesting book that kept the reader wanting to know more about her main character, Saul, and how he saw his life. Broken down into two time periods with the first, mainly in East Germany before the fall of the wall, and the second twenty years later with him in between the two times and trying to tie the two together after a serious accident.

Without discussing this book with others I found The Man Who Saw Everything confusing. Time was shifting constantly and it was hard to keep up with the time and reality.

This one took me a little while to get into, but once I was in, I was completely absorbed. This book is very different from Deborah Levy’s other recent books. However, there are some really interesting things going on in this book. I could easily read this one over and over again. I often found myself perplexed. At some point I had to just let go let her take me on this strange journey. Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the advance readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy, which has been long-listed for this year's Booker Award, is the story of Saul Adler, a historian focused on Eastern European history, and his two life-impacting trips across Abbey Road - that road made famous by The Beatles album of the same name.

Chiefly, this book is about the memories of a deeply flawed man and how those memories turn end-over-end around each other following his second trip to Abbey Lane, where he experiences major trauma. I found the way the story is constructed, specifically the second half, interesting, as Levy allows the reader to experience the submersion and rising of memories and his present day experiences as Saul does. Not surprising given her background as a playwright, Levy's dialogue is especially strong and impactful. I also really enjoyed the imagery of the final chapter, which was beautifully done.

This is a novel light on plot and long on character development, which is interesting to me, but be forewarned that Saul Levy is not a great guy, so you might find his whiny self-preoccupation a little taxing.

Deborah Levy is sly. Even the title here is misleading. And with her other fictional works, there is an overhanging sense of menace, that not everything is as it appears to be.

We first meet Saul Adler in 1988, in the process of recreating at least in part the iconic Abbey Road cover, stepping onto the zebra walk as his girlfriend, on a ladder, snaps a photo. A photo meant as a gift for a Beatle fanatic in the GDR, sister of his translator. Clipped by a Jag XKE, he is barely grazed. And there is a lot of Beatle material here, with many references to Penny Lane which wasn't even on the Abbey Road disc, but provides somewhat of a roadmap for Saul's life both in 1988 and the events of 30 years later ("Penny Lane is in my head..."). So many others have revealed too much of the plot -- and their interpretation of events, but I'll just say that among the delights and puzzles, she asks the question "....When [he] finally removed his sunglasses, his eyes were bright, clear blue, shocking as a snake bite. I wondered how he would use his extreme beauty, which is always useful and always a burden, sometimes even freakish."

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.

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 that never gets between the reader and the story. Which is not the say the reader won't have to do their share of the work. I never stopped thinking while reading this book. It's like a mind puzzle (if you liked the movie, Inception, you'll know what I mean - - though this is NOT a science fiction story).

The book is divided into two sections, and the first section seems straightforward on its face, and then the second section turns the whole book on its head. It is simultaneously easy to read and hard to interpret. Personally, I love a book that makes the reader work a bit. I will confess that the ending didn't provide me with 100% satisfaction, but I really enjoyed the book nonetheless.

Note, I'm refraining from outlining the plot at all, and that's because most of the fun is letting the story reveal itself and enjoying how your perspective of the protagonist changes and morphs as the story evolves. Thematically, it touches on love, loss, sexuality, mental health, and the imperfections of human perception.

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.

I found it difficult 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

“Yes,” older Jennifer said, “I knew I had to get away from your love as fast as possible.”

It is 1988, Saul Adler is a beautiful, young Historian thinking only about his glamorous girlfriend Jennifer, a photographer who is planning to take a picture of him crossing Abbey Road just like the Beatles album cover for his host’s sister Luna, who adores the Beatles. In three days he is meant to leave for East Germany (GDR) to research “cultural opposition to the rise of facism in the 1930s at Humboldt University”. Granted permission into the archives for promising to ‘engage sensitively’ and ‘focus on education, healthcare and housing for all it’s citizens’, subjects of which he had discussed with his own father before he died. Here Walter Müller will be his translator but right now his mind is stuck on Jennifer when he is nearly run over in a zebra crossing (pedestrian crosswalk) falling back instead on the curb. The car that comes seemingly out of nowhere and nearly hits him is driven by a man in his sixties named Wolfgang, and so follows a peculiar interaction, the novel itself is a peculiar interaction with the reader and yet compelling for this very reason. Looking back on his notes from the night before, his hip sore from the fall, he thinks about his dead father who was a tyrant much like Joseph Stalin. He remembers how his brother doled out the punishment for their father, for Saul being so fragile, so much like his dead mother, for not being the right sort of son, his father offended always by his ‘sublime beauty’. Beauty that can seem to the reader like a blessing and curse. His relationship with Jennifer is crumbling and he isn’t really sure why. Jennifer feels she isn’t really seen by Saul, does she wish to be seen beyond her beauty, is that why describing her with words is verboten? But does she see him beyond his ‘sublime beauty’ or care about his mind? He is confused by her adamant complaints that he doesn’t see her, doesn’t know anything about her art of which, by the way, he is the subject, but she is all he sees! He would marry her! She wants to end things, ‘you will always be my muse‘ and so with the death of his father and relationship ending he is ready for great change. It is in GDR that his life splits and forks when he meets his translator Walter Müller and Walter’s sister Luna. Told not to say ‘everything was grey and crumbling’ in his report, the truth is Walter is a relief, spending time laughing in his company, finding pleasure in someone who isn’t about ‘material gain’ frees Saul. Censorship here, he knows, isn’t any different than Jennifer’s censorship of his thoughts and feelings for her.

Something strange is happening, objects look familiar like the tiny carved wooden train Walter is holding. There are new desires too, who knew mushroom hunting could be such a pleasurable experience. With his father’s ashes in tow, the haunting memories of his past too have hitched a ride. People he meets become consumed by him, Saul always the center of others. Luna is no exception. “Your hair is so black. Like the birds in the fields.” There is a lot he doesn’t see in GDR too, truths about Walter, Luna, and Walter’s colleague Rainier. Just who is Rainier really, with his acoustic guitar and interested questioning? It’s not just about communism, country, family, sex or love. It’s all those things. It’s about time and memories, about how our version of reality can be a fiction we tell ourselves. We are all haunted houses, in a sense, age at times bringing more questions, regrets like phantoms.

The past, present and future come at us fast and we are all splintered beings. Saul’s love is fluid, and not any easier for it. We are really not the stars in anyone’s lives, not even our own. When told to ‘go back to your world’, which world is that? People are suddenly older, and Saul knows everything but not how or why. His story is shattered, time is slippery and faces, people are blurring and blending. It’s how we fail to be there, how we destroy others being entrenched so deeply in ourselves. Everything is a weight, even the things we think we shucked off.

This is like a drunken read I don’t believe I would have understood were I younger, fresher and less jaded. It’s horrible and beautiful because it reveals cracks in human beings, I think. You get lost in the tangle, the shame, joy, pain, love and confusion of Saul’s life. Missing so much like you will in your own, if you live long enough for regrets, for a long hard look in a fractured mirror reflecting the many versions of you. I like that the Abbey Road photograph is the beginning of this story, we have these photographic memories of ours that never tell the whole tale, only hint at what is happening. These flashes of ours, wondering what’s outside the photo, who is the eye, what are the subjects thinking and feeling behind what we can behold. This novel put me in a weird frame of mind.

This is certainly an engaging read, but it is dizzying. In the beginning you are like a newborn baby trying to make sense of weird occurrences, not understanding up from down.

Deborah Levy’s writing can unsettle you, but I enjoy her work for that reason.

Publication Date: October 15, 2019

Bloomsbury Publishing

This was not my type of book.....it was very strange and difficult to know what was real and what was in the narrators imagination.

The author presents us with a very stylized novel in two parts; each of those parts different years in the life of Saul Adler. The book concerns itself with the main protagonist's perception of events around him. I've read reviews of Ms Levy's other books and all laud her. I'm therefore submitting this resume to the publisher in order to comply with the pact which means selecting the book and supplying an opinion. I must be frank in indicating that the author's style is not for me. This is not meant as a valid criticism of her writings nor any indication that the reader should skip the book. Her reputation is such that the book should be selected by any serious reader in order to formulate their own ideas.
Saul Adler is invited to visit communist East Berlin in 1988 a time that Berlin was a divided city. He is charged with writing a favorable review of the city he visits in return for allowing him to do research there. Prior to leaving he decides to take a photo of himself standing on the crosswalk of Abbey Road a place immortalized by the Beatles several years prior. His host in East Berlin is a fan of the group and Saul is sure the photo will be welcomed and enjoyed. While standing there he is struck by a car sustaining some injuries.
The trip goes forward with Saul's experiences in East Berlin. The novel than leaps forward to 2016 and picks Saul up experiencing a second more serious accident struck by a car. And the end result is to tie the book together.