Whilst this book has received praise from reviewers I found it to be depressing.  A tale initially of a young historian, Saul, who goes over to East Germany before the wall is demolished.  So faces all the communist protocols of the times, though not a communist himself, his father did have such beliefs and Saul is trying to write a paper on this part of history.  He has a fling with both his East German, male translator and the translator's sister.  The book then flips to Saul being in bed in hospital under intensive care and receiving morphine.  With the dreamland and wakefulness times being mixed and muddled, Saul remembers parts of his life and what a mess he made of it.  It's cleverly written exploring the subconscious memory at times.
However, I wouldn't recommend this book to friends, as I said I found it depressing.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley. 

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. 
Natalie.

Surreal, dazzling and puzzling. This novel is worthy of its nominations and more. Incredible plot and characters

Thankyou to netgalley, the publishers and author for the copy of this novel. Their generosity has no influence on the rating i gave this novel.

I have to say i didn't particularly enjoy this book of Deborah Levy's. Maybe it's because i didn't have any empathy with Saul, the main character who is hit by a car, disappears off to the GDR and lots more things happen, but I found it hard to understand the time slippages and what was happening when. Had he been in a coma for the whole thing? i'll never know, or really care.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy received a well-deserved Booker Prize nomination last year. Set in the 1980s, it tells the story of Saul Bellow, a university lecturer who has recently broken up with his girlfriend Jennifer shortly before he embarks on a research trip to East Berlin. As with Levy's other novels, the plot is rather elusive with so much uncertainty surrounding the shifting setting - everything set up in the first part is then unravelled in the second half which got rather confusing. However, the characterisation was engaging enough to hold my interest and I enjoyed spotting the numerous Beatles motifs which recur throughout.

This slim volume spans a large expanse of time exploring and sees the disintegration of time as man's mind deteriorates. It's a beautiful jigsaw of a novel, delving into human sexuality and recent history. I recommend thoroughly.

Deborah Levy knows how to tell a story and she also knows how to serve up big ideas. Chuck in a great sub plot and an unreliable narrator and voila, you have ‘The Man Who Saw Everything’. Skilful, daring and different.

I really like Hot Milk so was keen to read more of Levy's work. I wasn't disappointed - this is a stylish, well-crafted book with a great plot. 

I loved the intertwining of key points in time matched with very contemporary backdrop of Brexit. It was a really clever book and highly enjoyable read.

Deborah Levy has had a few of her books short and long listed for The Man Booker Prize  including her latest novel The Man Who Knew Everything, on this years long list. Set in 1988 and 2016 Saul Adler finds himself twice on Abbey Road, crossing the famous zebra crossing, and being knocked over. In 1988 he visits the German Democratic Republic (GDR), as part as history thesis and enters the world of Walter and his sister Luna who leave a huge impression on his life. Just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Saul finds himself in an environment where all you do is watched and you can’t trust anyone. 2016 he looks back at his life, his loves and losses in a slightly surreal dream like scene, fragmented. and with Saul not the most reliable of narrators.  As expected this is a beautifully written book, that raises many thought provoking questions.

This is a very character driven read with Saul as the sole narrator. He is portrayed as a very beautiful man with his shoulder length dark hair, beautiful eyes and high cheekbones. His beauty is important to him, and he is defined by it to a certain extent, his girlfriend Jennifer Moreau uses him as muse for her art, and his beauty draws both Walter and Luna to him. He does come across as slightly shallow and self centred, not always realising the feelings of others or the consequences of his actions. But through him we see how memories can be fragmented, and how his memories may not always be the truth and can be open to interpretation.

Deborah Levy always writes such beautiful and descriptive prose. This is a very sensual read, as love and sexuality are an important part of Saul’s story, there are some wonderful sentences about touch and feel that really stand out. At only two hundred pages this is a short read but within those two hundred pages there is a of thought provoking content, as the subjects of memory, sexuality, love, history and beauty come to the fore.

The Man Who Saw Everything has been hard to review as I don’t want to give anything away. What I can tell you is that I found this a mesmerising and intelligent read, with expressive prose and a fascinating central character.  I absolutely loved this book, and highly recommend adding it to your shelves or book pile.

My interest in reading this stemmed from my studies of communism and the Cold War: I was curious to read a story set in context of these events, along with the fact this was in the running for the 2019 Man Booker Prize.

This book reads like a mental hypnotic spiral - imagine Alice when she’s falling down the rabbit hole to Wonderland - because of how befuddling and scattered Saul’s thoughts and feelings are. I personally found it challenging to understand what meaning was behind Saul and other characters words and actions upon reading them, so I wouldn’t describe this as an easy book to read. However, once it all lingers in the mind, it comes together quite rewardingly, for a truly memorable ending.

Saul was a fascinating protagonist and I thoroughly enjoyed reading his story. He’s thoughtless yet in other ways entirely visionary, or at least represents such sentiment. Moreover, Saul’s expertise on the GDR was both interesting and frightening in terms of the plot. His character couldn’t escape the lens of his knowledge of the topic: he kept comparing things he witnessed or his own feelings to things that happened to Stalin or things happening in divided Germany.

I cannot stress enough how much I adored Levy’s commentary on masculinity and gender issues. Sal’s character is described as appearing quite feminine – as one character points out that with long hair, Saul could pass as a woman. As well as this, Saul’s character wears his mother’s pearl necklace, which goes without saying would regrettably be considered as odd and unacceptable in places even today. But my god, Levy got it right in one sentence, which I must quote for its brilliance: “I had never given much thought to a pearl belonging to a gender.”

The Man Who Saw Everything is a refreshing insight into the realities a lot of people had to face during The Cold War, and even more concerning, what a lot of people still face in the world today. One of these realities is censorship, which Levy contrasted well via Jennifer and how she told Saul certain words were forbidden, and then also what Saul observed in East Berlin.

My only quibbles were its readability and enjoyment. Firstly, this isn’t a book everyone can pick up and easily read. It’s development and structure is quite complex to grasp, in comparison to other books. And secondly, after the first half of the story - when Saul is older - I felt the feeling of the story became quite lifeless and was nowhere near as enjoyable as the first half.

The Man Who Saw Everything is a highly political assessment of our world’s history and our societies across the decades, which is in its entirety, both poignant and dare I say haunting. This is without a shadow of doubt a profound book beneath a modest surface that will not be everybody’s cup of tea, but for those who love intricate and equivocal woven stories, then The Man Who Saw Everything is not to be missed. 


Thank you kindly to the publishers and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy, in exchange for this honest review.

I adore Deborah Levy and will read anything she writes.

This novel was clever and deeply unsettling, as though the ground is shifting beneath the reader's feet on every sentence. Saul is lightly struck by a car on the Abbey Road crossing in 1988, and the German drivers asks if he is all right; Saul is later struck by a car on the Abbey Road crossing in 2016, and the driver Wolfgang blames him entirely.

This is a novel of echoes and anachronisms, the shattering of memory, and the perception of reality. Phew! Not that ambitious then, ho ho... Deborah Levy, in her unflinchingly brilliant style, totally pulls it off.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Books for this e-copy in return for my honest review.  Deservedly longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, a clever and stunning read.

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 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.

One of those lovely books that starts as one thing, and turns into quite another. When Saul Adler is knocked down by a car on the zebra crossing at Abbey Road in 1988, it's the start of a chain of events which leads him to the GDR and a new lover. What's less clear is how he knows that the Wall will soon come down, and what happens in Eastern Europe thereafter.  Some beautfully subtle hints are scattered through the first part of this novel which reveals its plot like the peeling of an onion. It's about youthful idealism, dreams of the future and of the past. What's art? Who owns beauty? How do global politics influence our behaviour and our options time and again? What's left when we look back at the past and the decisions we made when we knew no better what might lie ahead? Clever and erudite.

I thoroughly enjoyed this meandering historical fiction of two halves. The novel opens when Saul Adler is hit by a car in 1988. A Jewish historian, he goes on to break up with his girlfriend and head to Berlin where he falls deeply in love. Back in current time, Saul Adler is again hit by a car at the same, infamous Abbey Road crossing. This time, he appears to be hospitalised, and the slow unfurling of his memories, stitched together however authentically, are genuine magic to read.

Better than I expected although it took a while for it to gell with me considering it is quite short .

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy brings us full circle in pondering the political and personal walls we construct, and invites us to separate our perceived truth from reality.

After her memoir The Cost of Living, fans of Deborah Levy may have speculated what direction her next novel might take. She hinted at a move away from the “phantom of femininity” to “find new main characters with other talents.” Despite a male protagonist at the helm in The Man Who Saw Everything, the stance of women in society still claims its stake. But the state of our global politics and obsession with self are both under intense scrutiny.

The Man Who Saw Everything yields a voice and writing style unique to its author. Fusing a soon to be united and soon to be divided Europe, characters span the Berlin Wall and Brexit eras. Cleverly constructed, both past and present are relayed in the present tense.

‘What was I aiming for? What did I want? What did I deserve?’
The book opens in 1988 with young historian Saul Adler aiming to cross Abbey Road in a state of self-indulgence to replicate The Beatles album cover. However, as he steps onto the famous zebra crossing he is knocked to the ground by a car. This same act is repeated some thirty years later. However, the time zone remains deliberately unclear to the reader until the author is ready to sharpen the focus.

‘Jennifer was always looking at me through the lens of her camera.’
Believing keen photographer Jennifer Moreau obsesses over his beauty, Saul visits her following the first accident for sex and sympathy. As he sits licking his wounds he asks for her hand in marriage. Jennifer immediately steps into her own power and discards him. Wielding her sexual ylang-ylang scent she is a welcome contrast from the women Stalin flirts with by flicking table bread at them. With Saul’s ego bruised, much like his hip following the accident (as he continues to remind us), he travels to East Germany to research communism for a paper and consequently invites a love interest in the form of translator, Walter Müller.

“It’s like this, Saul Adler: the main subject is not always you.”
Upon rearranging the letters of Saul Adler’s name we realise that the tone has always been set. The Sad Allure of a burdened narcissist on a quest to quench his thirst drinking from the cup of others. His obsession with self screams from the page. Although the book title describes him as all-seeing, he is not listening to the needs of others. His continual expression conveys his own humiliation, neglect, abuse. Lunging from sadness to relief mid paragraph, his narcissistic perceptions are overpowering. His intense blue eyes and irresistible torso charm others until they discard him, as he sees it, inexplicably.

‘I was to live with my father and brother without my mother, who had used her body like a human wall to protect me from them.’
Perhaps the root source of Saul’s psychological trauma was losing his mother to a car accident when he was young. Clinging to the vivid memory of his mother, the string of pearls which belonged to her cling to his neck. (As a side note, the author herself wore pearls daily until the string snapped during a minor debate so it is interesting a set should end up here). Adrift from society, yet unwilling to return to a motherless home, Saul seems incapable of loving or living without sorrow. As a result these pearls are of great significance to him.

‘Surveillance was the air everyone breathed.’
Despite the communist regime, bisexuality and beauty prevail in Saul’s world: Eyes, lips, a seductive laugh. While the communists are watching the tyrants treading the soil of East Germany, Saul is himself busy: Viewing how his own reflection bleeds into him and considering how others view him.

Perhaps by surveying the world through the eyes of a narcissist the author is asking us to question the current global climate. The unrest which resides. The walls and borders ever deeper. Perhaps she is asking us to stop looking within and to look with’out’. To take an interest in something other than self. To think beyond the beauty of the rose to how the garden needs to be tended.

‘Attention, Saul Adler. Attention! Look to the left and to the right, cross the road and get to the other side.’
Just as Sofia in Deborah Levy’s Booker nominated Hot Milk was vague about what she wanted to see, so too is Saul Adler. He suggests his desire to cross the road is to bridge a linear connection with something bigger than himself. But he masks his true desire: To carelessly play with others, observe them quiver at his behest, whatever the cost.

With complex layering and time slip motif, Levy’s eighth novel is as much a demanding read as it is demanding. Provocative and unflinching the book requires an adjustment of our own lens to separate our perception of what is real and imagined. She is urging us to view the spectre hidden within our inner and outer worlds and seek a truth which unifies not divides us.

A deserved contender for the Booker Prize longlist.
Thank you Penguin Random House and Netgalley for the proof.

This didn't really work for me. Much too tricksy and needed far too much of my attention which is in short supply at the moment.

An anti-communist Jewish man is hit by a car while crossing the road just before he goes to East Germany to research communism. Not knowing who to trust, the story evolves like a dream sequence, as gradually we come to know the man and the stories behind the crash. 

This is unlike anything I’ve read before. I absolutely loved Levy’s first novel, Hot Milk, and her writing is an absolute delight for fans of good literature. I would have had this as a Booker Prize finalist, for sure. This book has a Paul Auster feel about it and is fascinating and poignant in equal measure. Highly recommended.