4.5 stars

A biographical novel of Thomas Mann’s life, it follows his evolving identity as a person, a writer, & a German. This book is intensely emotional but in a quiet, contemplative, sort of way. I thoroughly enjoyed the nuanced character portrayals & historical details that contextualize his major novels & his life story.

[What I liked:]

•The book is long, & it’s not a particularly fast-paced novel, but neither does it drag or get boring. It has a nice flow, a good balance between external events happening & the development & evolution of Thomas as a person & a writer. His lifelong search for identity, his close relationships, & his work are what the story focuses on. It’s rich & nuanced in content.

•The characters are well developed, have unique voices, & all the major characters are likable in some aspect. I really appreciate how much we get to see of Thomas’s relationships with his siblings, wife, & children—the tragedies & joys & perplexities of family life contribute much to this story. And I enjoyed reading about Thomas himself, his sensitivity & secret desires, his love of music & poetry, his close companionship with Katia, his feelings of being a fraud, his frustrations with society, his family, & himself. He’s a very relatable character, one I felt I got to know & appreciate well.

•The book is well researched, & covers Thomas’s early life in late 19th C Germany to his last year of life in 1955, across two continents & both world wars. The details of his life, his family, his politics, his writing, & his sexuality are portrayed without the narrative taking obvious sides or passing judgment on morality. I appreciate the nuance.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•The beginning starts out rather slow, introducing us to Thomas & his siblings in his childhood, focused mainly on establishing the setting & family characters. Once we hit Thomas’s adolescence it gets more interesting as his inner life gains depth.

CW: racism, drug abuse, infidelity, suicide

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

Colm Tolbin's historical novel, The Magician, is a long detailed fictional biography of Thomas Mann. After finishing this novel, I feel like I know a great deal about Mann and his family. Mann lived during a complex period of war and conflict within Germany, which Tolbin does capture in telling Mann's story. In many ways, Tolbin's novel reads like biography and history, rather than a novel. I have read other Tolbin novels, but The Magician is completely different, in tone and style, from his other works. The research and detail are impressive, and while this novel is more biography than novel, it remains readable.

This book follows the life of Thomas Mann, a German author. Despite Thomas' homosexual desires, he marries and father's six children. During WWII, he is forced to flee with his family, ultimately settling in the United States.

I had a difficult time with this book. It was long and drawn out. I lost interest about halfway through when all of the character started to blend together. I think the book would benefit from some heavy editing. Overall, 2 out of 5 stars.

This vibrant and personal novel about the life of Thomas Mann, a renowned writer with immense influence in the first half of the 20th century, is a deep plunge into the details of his unconventional family merged with the terrible history of the world wars and fall of Germany. Like all good historical fiction, there are enough details to tell stories, but the narrative is not bogged down. Mann's inner life, which would not be depicted in a biography, his quiet desires and his foibles, are front and center. Toibin has mastered the material and given today's reader a look back in time.

I did not know a whole lot about Thomas Mann or his writing before I picked this book, but I was so intrigued by the description and his background and the cover is so gorgeous and intriguing. This book was very long and took me some time to get through, but it was so beautifully written and no detail felt unimportant. Truly astounding what Thomas was able to accomplish throughout his life, all while navigating through some very dark times in his homeland. Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for the ARC.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader’s copy. All opinions are my own.

It took me a long time to read this book. It’s supposed to be historical fiction, but it read more like history. It was a bit too dry for my liking, so I didn’t not this story at all.

This novel maps Thomas Mann’s life from his late 19th-century youth in straitlaced Lübeck, in northern Germany, through his many refugee homes in Europe and the US, to a speaking tour in celebration of Goethe, which occurred a few years before his 1955 death. It seems that Mann was always in physical and emotional exile. His family moved from Lübeck to Munich when he was a young man, shortly after his father’s death. While traveling in France in 1933, he was warned that he was in danger from the Nazis and he and his wife didn’t return to Germany until after World War II.

After living in France and Switzerland, the Mann family fled to the US in 1939. Along with Albert Einstein, he was invited to teach at Princeton University. Not finding Princeton or New Jersey congenial, his next move was to Pacific Palisades. During the Cold War, he was accused of being a communist or at least a communist sympathizer. He finally uprooted his family one last time and they moved to Switzerland.

The picture Toibin paints of Mann is someone who lived as an observer, rarely engaging but always watching. A man who was married and had six children, but who longed for young men his whole life. Others insisted on categorizing him politically, which forced his many exiles, but no matter where he lived, he was able to write, because his focus was on the mind and the soul.

I found it hard to engage with the book for quite awhile, because it has a somewhat chill and remote tone, suiting its subject. But eventually I was drawn in and found it a rewarding read. I would say that the ideal reader for the book is someone who has a strong interest in the lives of artists and writers.

This is an historical novel based on the life of German author, Thomas Mann. It is told from his point of view beginning in the late 1800s through his death in the 1950s. This book has so many layers; it addresses his genius, his family, his conflicts about his sexuality, fleeing the Nazis, meeting FDR, and working for the Library of Congress. The Mann family were a bunch of eccentric geniuses, and treated women equally during times in history when that wasn't the norm.. Toibin's writing is impeccable as well. This book is moving and thought-provoking in so many ways.

This book of historical fiction covers the life of Thomas Mann, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, from his youth in Lübeck Germany through his adult life as he marries and raises a family, flees from Germany with the rise of Hitler, and settles in the US and Switzerland in later years. Colm Tóibín did an immense amount of research and this is a comprehensive rendering of Mann's life as well as the cultural and political backdrop of the time.

Dialogue is imagined and portrayed here based on letters, diaries and multiple biographies on Mann. We get a deep dive into the thoughts and yearnings of young Thomas. So much happens in his head and goes unsaid. We get rich imagery, from the exotic Brazil of Mann's mother to staid Lübeck to bohemian Munich to the chic Pacific Palisades.

I found some parts of it very meta: Tóibín writing about Mann writing about his family. This is a discussion Mann is having with his brother Heinrich (also an author) about Buddenbrooks, Mann's early novel loosely based on their family in Lübeck:
“It changes everything about the family, how people will see our mother and father. How they see you. People will feel they know us everywhere we go.”
“Would you like one of your books to do that?”
“I think novels should not deal so obsessively with private life.”
“And my book?”
“It may be about that. Yes, it may. But readers will feel more that they are peering in through a window.”
“That might be the perfect description of what a novel is.”
“In that case, you have written a masterpiece. I should not be surprised that you are already so famous.”

The longest and most interesting chapters address the Mann family's flight from Germany before WWII. Mann was not left leaning during WWI, considered a national treasure of Germany, was comfortable. Over the years the family observed the shift rising throughout Germany, and they were forced to leave, as narrated in this passage: "The very culture he had represented since the war—bourgeois, cosmopolitan, balanced, unpassionate— was the very one that they were most determined to destroy. The tone he used in his prose—ponderous, ceremonious, civilized— was the precise opposite of the tone they wielded".

There are some aspects I didn't love. Mann's obsession with young boys was off putting. I struggled a bit with Mann's agency. His portrayal seemed reactive, his actions informed by those around him: his mother, wife, children (they're all lively, unique characters), other family members, his small circle of friends (including the very influential Alice Meyer, wife of the owner of The Washington Post). Some of the chapters felt like they skipped around a bit, leaving gaps in the narrative.

For those interested in learning more about the life and times of Thomas Mann I'd recommend this book. It will be available September 7, 2021 at a bookstore near you. Thank you #NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is the first book by Colm Toibin that I have read and it also was an introduction to Thomas Manning. I wasn’t sure if I would like it. Well, I definitely did! I got hooked pretty quickly even though the pace seemed leisurely..
The story is intimate and follows Manning from his early life until his death. You get to know his family and the situations faced at this perilous time in history. The details on each personality and individuals’ responses to events make one see the way lives are affected.

I became engrossed in the people in Manning’s life and spent time looking into all I could find on the internet.
Toibin’s writing style is calm and paced well. It gives you the ability to absorb the characters. places and movements. You feel these real lives as they pass through time.

I can’t wait to reread”Death in Venice.”

Here's the thing, you always know that you are going to get a beautifully written book when you read Tóibín. No matter his topic, he brings depth and life to all of his topics. Unfortunately, in this case, the best portions of the book are when Tóibín writes about the political and social upheaval in Germany. You can feel the tension in the writing as though you are living in Munich during the 1918 revolution or walking through the streets of a destroyed city post World War II. These portions keep the story moving which is desperately needed when you are digging through a 500+ page book. For me, these sections were the things that kept me moving through.

Thomas Mann is an author that I have heard about, but never read which means that I came into this book with zero context which I find to be really helpful when reading a fictionalized account of someone. You have less to compare to the "facts" of history and it's often easier to embrace the story. The Magician is meant to be a sweeping book that offers a glimpse into the mind and life of Mann. At times, it does feel like a glimpse into his world, but more often than not, it simply reads a biography of Mann. We rarely get an intimate portrait, he remains enigmatic and stoic in a way that lacks connection to the reader. The moments that come through the most clearly - his confusion over his sexuality and the autobiographical aspects of his writings - are straight from his diaries. Nothing about Mann in this novel feels groundbreaking. Again, it felt more like a biography than a novel in which we are hoping to gain some sort of insight into the man himself.

Now, I totally get that it feels like I am not liking this novel, but the fact is there are pieces that I really loved. As I mentioned, Tóibín's depiction of the political and social climate in Europe is haunting and so beautiful. It probably helps that is the period of history that I actually study, so I have a special place in my heart for it. However, it is accurate, beautiful, and so well done. The other piece that I enjoyed so much is the generational aspect of the story. The Mann family is absolutely fascinating. We begin with Thomas's mother, Júlia da Silva Bruhns, a Brazilian transplant married to his senator father. The portrait of Julia through Mann's (and subsequently Tóibín's) eyes is so compelling. She's both vibrant and out of place in a rigid society. We then have Mann's complex relationships with his siblings - Heinrich, Julia, Carla, and Viktor. These are vibrant and the dynamics are ever-shifting just like in a real family. The relationships really bring some of the best moments of the books, but it's almost always when we are with those characters alone and not with Mann. It really feels like, as a reader, while Mann's family is fascinating, that he may not have been the perspective to stick with to tell the story.

Final note, I did really appreciate the way that Tóibín addresses and navigates the challenges of Mann's homosexuality. Particularly taken in the context of the changing social mores of German society. When Mann is a young adult, his homosexuality is not an accepted form of life. However, in the aftermath of the First World War, that really shifted in Germany, particularly in Berlin. We get to see the comparison of Mann's repressed sexuality versus the open lifestyle of his children, Klaus and Erika, who live their life with such freedom. If I could just have a book on the children of Thomas Mann, I would read it because they were an insanely talented and diverse group.

Bottom line, if you are a fan of Tóibín then it falls very much in line with his other work. The writing is beautiful, the topics are interesting, but the execution is slightly flawed. A solid book that didn't grab me completely, but was still enjoyable.

The Magician is available September 7, 2021 at a bookstore near you! Thank you so much to #NetGalley and Scribner for the early access to this book in exchange for my honest review.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Scribner for an advanced copy of this fictional biography.

Colm Tóibn's The Magician tells the life of Thomas Mann German author of such books as Buddenbooks and The Magic Mountain, in fictional form, similar to his book The Master which was on the life of English writer Henry James. I was familiar with Mr. Mann's writings, but knew nothing about the man. In fact I had not idea how many significant events in history he was close to and passed through.

The book is written in a sort of fictional biographical way, that makes the characters a little removed from their own story. It almost feels that you are looking through a mirror and seeing the characters reacting to things, rather than reading about them. I can see where some readers would have problems with this as the book describes the physical life and mental anguishes so well, but Mr. Mann's creativity is not really addressed. His children call him 'The Magician' for his ability to create stories completely out of nothing. I would like to have known more about how he wrote, but this is a minor quibble.

A very interesting read about an author I didn't know much about. Mr. Tóibín has a gift for writing and this was an extremely well written pleasurable book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the chance to be drawn into this world and life of Thomas Mann. Admittedly I know little of Mann's work but I am a fan of Toibin's writing and it is my love for his past writing, particularly Brooklyn, that drew me to this new novel. I hesitate to label this as historical fiction as many will and let people think it is another WWII historical fiction book when it is more a timeless story, centered of course around important historical events, of a desire for change and a better life, even set against times of almost insurmountable world and personal strain. It is in some ways fitting for our times right now as we all seek to rise from this past year filled with so much turmoil and this is perhaps why the book resonated with me in many ways.

There is always for me a simple elegance to Toibin's writing, a clarity that keeps me engrossed in the characters and also the settings, the worlds they live in and the inner turmoil and thoughts within, the personal struggles blended with changing historic times and contexts. Mann was clearly a difficult but compelling figure, one who saw and observed which surely lead to his success as a writer but also lead him to be a challenging person to live with. I appreciated the deftness in which his life was portrayed, allowing me as the reader to learn about his life in an engaging, informative, but not dry manner. Toibin's writing again was what drove my enjoyment, he can tell the simplest or most complex of stories in a way that feels approachable, intimate, and powerful. The idea of the magician, of a figure that generated this fascination within the public and others in his life, is well developed in Toibin's elegant structure and writing style.

I look forward to sharing this book within my literary fiction group on Instagram, this definitely fits within what many of us love to talk about.

The Magician is another beautifully written novel by Colm Toibin. It's a fictionalized account of German author Thomas Mann's life, whom I didn't know much about. While the writing was lovely, I found the story hard to get into. It felt very dry; instead of historical fiction it just felt more like history.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for this ARC.

So much information about the influential author Thomas Mann and the world-changing times he lived through. I am left with great respect for him as he successfully navigated two world wars, the suicides of several family members, and having to relocate many times over several countries and two continents. This family saga really lets the reader get to know his wife and six children which are the spice in the story. In many ways, this novel reads more like a non-fiction biography.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner/Simon & Schuster for the ARC to read and review.

I thought this novel was extremely well written, however, for whatever reason, I could not get into it.

4.25. Colm Toibin is a favorite writer of mine. I loved The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary, and Nora Webster, to name a few. His prose is always lovely and concise. His newest novel, The Magician, is labeled a historical fiction about Thomas Mann, the author. However, the novel read more to me like a nonfiction biography, yet the prose was beautiful. I did not know much about Thomas Mann or his novels before, but Toibin crafted a masterful account of his life and career. Mann, a German, was very impacted by the two World Wars, and it's impact on the Germany he knew from birth, it's culture, and the world. Mann, indeed was a complicated individual with a similarly unusual family. An excellent read. I received an advance copy of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.

A absolutely lovely book.

A fictional account of the life of Thomas Mann, this book explores creative genius, the impulses that haunt and drive us, and what it means to search for beauty in art. Simply my favorite book so far in 2021.

Toibin fans won't be disappointed by this, particularly if they enjoyed The Master. As always the writing is stand out even if parts of the story are lacking; this doesn't seem to shine some new light on a well known figure with some well known predilections who had made quite a mark on literary history. Id be curious to know why Mann was the chosen subject.

Readers who admire Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, and The Magic Mountain will be enthralled by the way Colm Toibin imagines the way they came into being in The Magician. A fascinating mixture, the novel intertwines the facts of the historical Thomas Mann’s life and times with the thoughts, feelings, and desires of his fictionalized main character. The whole seems so believable that the reader is lured into forgetting that The Magician is not an autobiography but an account by a talented novelist who inhabits his character so completely that it is hard to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. Mann’s complicated family milieu and the era’s political realities are brought to such vivid life and presented with so much detail that one marvels at the amount of research Toibin must have done. Unlike The Master, Toibin’s novel about Henry James which concentrates on a discrete period of time, The Magician gives us Thomas Mann’s entire life so that we feel we know the man from the inside out. One wonders which novelist or other historical figure will be next on Toibin’s creative agenda and anticipates the answer with impatience.