"The Magician" is the story of novelist Thomas Mann who won the 1929 Nobel prize in literature. It's the portrait of a man born in Germany to an upper class, yet dysfunctional family. He explores homosexuality but, as was often the case during that time, he marries a woman and has 6 children. His wife, Katia, is beautifully portrayed by Tóibín as a highly intelligent, well-spoken, level-headed woman of her age who basically managed Mann's life while he wrote. The characters of the 6 children are expertly developed by Tóibín. The novel travels through Mann's childhood, the Munich revolution, Hitler's rise and resulting war, exile to America, Mann's relationship with the Roosevelts, America's entry into the war and finally, Mann's second exile to Switzerland. The novel is character-driven and while the world events keep the story moving along, Tóibín focuses on how a wealthy German family and famous author managed to survive despite political differences during the rise and subsequent rule of the Nazis. Excellent read.

This was my first foray into the work of Colm Toibin and being honest, I wish I had started with a different work. This dense deep dive into the life of Thomas Mann is rewarding in the end, but it took some time for me to get off the ground with it. Perhaps it doesn't help that I had never read the work of Thomas Mann before either. I enjoyed it and will continue to explore Toibin's work (and Mann's as well), but there was probably a better access point for a first go with Toibin.

It's a good one, but it's not my type of book. I was expecting to like because I liked the synopsis but it didn't affect me.

The Magician is a fascinating look into the life of Thomas Mann, and although it is written as historical fiction, it left me wondering how much of what I was reading were truths woven into the story. As a result, while enjoyable, this book took me much longer to finish than most books because I was frequently distracted by references (especially ones around philosophy, music and historical events) I had to go look up and do some research to understand the context.
Toibin is a very talented writer and the book seems well researched and paints an interesting picture of the accomplished and privileged Mann. The book spans most of Mann's adult life through WWII and beyond in Germany, the US and Switzerland and centers around his interactions with family, engagement in politics, obsessions with work and his repressed homosexuality (that he seemed not to act upon except as fantasy in his mind). The character profiles and stories of Mann's family - in particular, his children - were sometimes heartbreaking. Mann is portrayed as a tone-deaf, workaholic father and a somewhat arrogant author - with insecurities that were surprising. While a good deal of the book centers around descriptions of Mann's children, what they thought of him as a father and what they ended up doing with their lives, there's no intricate storyline that weaves a tangled web. Instead, his children, as adults, come in and out of his life (and sometimes become permanent fixtures in his life) and there are no suspenseful or action-packed episodes. I enjoyed this book for its historical context and perspective and it definitely left me to ponder Mann's impact and life and even has me considering re-reading Death in Venice.
Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book.

Colm Tóibín has done some remarkable work in the area of fictionalized biographies of some literary luminaries, and this was no exception. In fact, I think this book surpasses his last foray into the genre, which looked at the life of Henry James (The Master). Tóibín looks at authors who have been in the closet and who that repression has impacted their work and lives. In this book, he takes on the life of Thomas Mann and his indomitable and fascinating family of six children, over half of them also gay, or bisexual.

I think this book worked so well for me because the material is just so rich. Not only was Mann an interesting character, but his family of strong-willed, decadent, intelligent children was as well. Then take those personalities and then put it against the backdrop of both world wars and Mann's role as a literary ambassador for Germany. I was intrigued to understand his perspective and how he ended up speaking out for Germany but against Hitler and the Nazi regime. And his very conflicted feelings about being someone who was exiled but so deeply linked to his homeland.

Even with all that fertile subject matter, what Tóibín also does so well is to craft thoughtful stories, with beautiful language and imagery. He elevates the genre with every new book. This was a pleasure to read and I am so glad I spent this time with the story of Thomas Mann and his family.

I’ve never ready any Thomas Mann. But this was a thorough and in-depth look at his life and I’m feeling like maybe I need to pick up Death in Venice. It definitely read more like a biography with a point of view character, but I found it quite readable. I especially enjoyed the inner look at what it was like to live in Germany during some of the most turbulent periods of history including World Wars 1 and 2. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

I was excited to read this book after hearing critical praise in the lead up to its publication. The setup, the life of Thomas Mann, a Nobel Prize winning author and his life in Germany during the Weimar republic and Nazi era, had the foundations for a fascinating novel. Tolbin did not disappoint. I greatly enjoyed learning about the life of Thomas Mann against the backdrop of a tumultuous, dark, and fascinating period of German history. The questions of sexuality and the creation of art amidst chaos were handled very well.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC (and apologies for the late review; life got in the way).

This is the first Tóibín novel I've read, and I wonder if I'm missing something. Like, maybe there's genius here that I'm not well-read enough to recognize? I've never read any of Thomas Mann's work either, so it is a strong possibility that I didn't get as much out of this novel because of my own lack of context.

Tóibín takes us through Mann's life, from youth to old age. It is obvious that Tóibín wants us to be sympathetic to Mann, but I found it hard to connect with the story as it was told. The first half of the novel felt so unemotional. In fact, I kept wondering whether I was reading a really poor translation. As if the imaginary translator was unable to express the deep and nuanced emotion that the author had expressed in his imaginary native language. Reading the first half of THE MAGICIAN was like reading a Wikipedia article about Thomas Mann's life. As I said above, perhaps this was intentional and I'm missing the reason?

The second half of THE MAGICIAN was marginally better. There were a handful of truly funny and witty spots of dialogue, and I got a much better feel for the characters and how they felt about themselves and each other. By no means were these feelings easy to discern, but they were there, buried beneath the teutonic surface. The trouble was that I still did not feel especially sympathetic to Mann. His flight from Germany and his exile in Switzerland, Princeton, and Pacific Palisades were accomplished with minimal hardship when compared with the millions of other Europeans being held captive and worse by the Nazi regime. And don't get me started on the children.

I'm giving THE MAGICIAN three stars because I learned a lot about Mann and his family, but I doubt I would revisit this novel. Once was more than enough.

I loved this novel-slash-biography of Thomas Mann. As he did with Henry James in "The Master," Toibin gets into both the life and the head of the celebrated German novelist.
My review of "The Magician" appeared in the Gay and Lesbian Review's November/December 2021 issue.
https://glreview.org/current-issue/

Oh dear. Despite critical plaudits, this seemed to me a dull slab of a book which dutifully follows an important but now dated writer through the trials of his long and significant - at the time - life.

The Magician is a novel based on the life of German author and Nobel prize winner, Thomas Mann. The book begins in the early 1900's in Germany and continues through the rise of Hitler when he was forced to flee Germany and lives in Europe and the US.

I found the first half absolutely riveting. Mann's struggle to become a writer against the wishes of his controlling father and how he used real people and events to form his novels was so interesting. The second half as Mann, his wife and daughter flee Germany did not hold my interest as well. Mann was just so entitled. He supposedly lost everything but he's demanding first class accommodations and is so coddled and selfish and never seems to lack for money or anything that I had trouble feeling much sympathy for him. The second half also seemed to be less story and more just a relating of events--which is what often happens in biography type books.

Still this novel is a great accomplishment and interesting to find out more about the man behind the books.

This beautifully written book is a fictionalized biography of Thomas Mann, the German author. It begins with Thomas as a school boy in Lubeck, son of a prominent family who will become even more well known when he publishes his first novel, Buddenbrooks, at the young age of 23. Encompassing most of his life, the Magician spans the years from 1891 to the early 1950s. Mann’s life and work had as its base the major events of those decades: World War I; the defeat of Germany accompanied by political and social instability and revolts; the rise and eventual takeover of Germany by the Nazi party; the Mann family in exile in Europe; Thomas Mann in the United States; the post WWII Cold War and return to Europe.

Against this background are the constants of Thomas’s life: his relationships with his family, his obsessive writing schedule, his wife Katia, and his longing for beautiful young men. These are all reflected in various ways in his novels, as are many of the historical events mentioned above. One of the features of this book that I really appreciated was the focus on Mann's state of mind and actual physical place as he was writing his major novels. Having read three of them, it added to my appreciation of each.

Thomas Mann was an obsessive diarist. How much of this material was physically available to Tobin I don't know but I imagine some of the material has become known over the years since his death and it features here. I very definitely recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Thomas Mann. Anyone who appreciates Toibin's writing will also very likely enjoy this too. It was a joy to read.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

The Magician is the fictionalized story of the life of writer, Thomas Mann. And when I say story of the life I mean from childhood to death. Toibin focuses heavily on Mann's sexuality as well as the lives and sexuality of Mann's children. He link Mann's novels with the events that were occurring in his life as well as the world at the time he was writing each novel. This is a book about a family of very eccentric people. It was an okay read. I have never read any of Mann's work so I am not sure if I would have enjoyed it more if was a Mann fan or not.

This was an exceptionally well written novel of historical fiction. To be transported back to 1939 and the life of Thomas Mann felt like a prize.

What an amazing book! I requested it for background reading for a feature we ran on BookBrowse (and will rerun in paperback). I did not review the book myself but you can see BookBrowse's review and article at the links below. Both were sent to publicity at the time they were published:

Review:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/bq277824/the-magician#reviews
Beyond the Book:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/btb/index.cfm/ref/bq277824/the-magician#btb

Colm Toibin has created a story that draws you in and lingers after you’ve set the book down. I appreciate the advanced read and will recommend to customers.

I started this book with absolutely no knowledge of Thomas Mann. The title comes from a name his children sometimes called him where he would do something lame like pull a coin out of their ear. Even though it is labeled as historical fiction sometime it felt like nonfiction and the author was not quite sure what direction he wanted to take. For me there was just no magic in the book.

I didn't like Thomas. He came off as a brat as a young man, doing poorly in school because all he wanted to do was write and his parents felt his brother, Heinrich, had the talent. When his family finds him work he just sits and writes stories instead of doing his job and is fired and embarrasses his parents. I got tired of reading how he lusted after young men. He finally marries Katia Pringsheim and has six children, all of them unlikeable especially Erika who was out of control from day one and supported by her parents pretty much all of her life.

I hated the very long chapters but felt it was an easy book to read. I kept hoping I would feel something for the characters but it just didn't come together for me.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Scribner for providing me with a copy of this story.

I knew next-to-nothing about Thomas Mann and had read nothing of his until this past summer when the bestie and I read "Death in Venice" for summer reading [<spoiler>I was unimpressed for the record, and will not be seeking any more of his books to read, though I will concede that the writing was good and what I was feeling was par for the course. I just didn't happen to like the story or how it was told - very much a personal preference. </spoiler> ]. I ended up only liking this book, not loving it.

While you get a fairly entertaining story [though not always, there were moments of real boredom for me and I may or may not have rolled my eyes], it is not fully fleshed out and it is more like you get glimpses of different era's of Thomas Mann's life and not the full picture. I would have like to know more about Thomas' writing process and thought process and a bit less of his [obnoxious and snotty "gosh you need a smack upside the head" children]. Much to the dismay of the bestie [who LOVED this book], I said that I would have LOVED this book as a nonfiction biography, with more of his life fleshed out. That would have been a glorious read for me. Apparently, that is sacrilege. LOL I have always loved nonfiction and it was a common thought as I read this and wished for a biography and not a fictionalized account as I believe that the author could write AMAZING nonfiction - he absolutely has a gift. I do recognize that I am a total outlier here and I am okay with that.

I am not sorry I read this as I learned more about an author I knew nothing about, and Colm Toibin is an excellent writer [the parts I liked, I really liked simply because of the amazing writing] and I can see why people loved this book. I would absolutely buy this [or recommend it] for friends that love biographical fiction.

Thank you to NetGalley, Colm Toibin, and Scribner for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Blending fact with fiction, Toibin conveys a "possibility" of many compelling issues in Thomas Mann's life, few of which I was familiar with. His extensive research allowed this story to be engaging on every level with every character. Any novel that makes me want to learn more about its subject is admirable. Thanks to NETGALLEY for the arc.

In THE MAGICIAN, Colm Toibin once again delivers the kind of signature read that made THE MASTER so haunting. Immersive, compelling and challenging, his portrait of Thomas Mann is nuanced and remarkable--a novel which will make you blink when you emerge from it, so deeply has the author immersed you in his world.