I studied Thomas Mann in university and I love Colm Tóibín's writing so I was instantly drawn to this book. It did not disappoint. In this book Colm's style of writing lends itself beautifully to his descriptions of Thomas Mann. It was fact based and truly engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Firstly, I am a big fan of WWII historical fiction but new to Colms work.

I found it difficult to relate/like/connect with the characters but that says more about me than the book as Thomas Mann was a real person so this is true historical fiction! For me, it was slow read and I found it quite hard to motivate myself to pick it up and continue reading.

Thanks NetGalley and published for the ARC.

While I’ve always loved both Colm Tóibín’s books and his writing style, I felt I couldn’t fully connect with his latest work.

I now know more than I could ever have reasonably been expected to know about Thomas Mann, but I’m not sure that he is a historical figure that I necessarily needed to know so much about.
That, and I also felt distanced from the characters and struggled to maintain my interest in their stories.

I think perhaps this is not the book for me but I can imagine history fans will happily read it and love it.

Sadly this book just was not for me. I enjoyed Toibin's writing style, it was as beautiful and endearing as ever but I just did not connect with the story being told and I was bored. For me, this was too long and I did lose interest in it.

This book had me hooked and afraid, all at the same time. Some days, I would be hungry to read more. Others, I would be afraid to turn the page as I feared for Mann and his family.

The Magician covers many strands of Thomas Mann’s life, including his sexuality, his politics and his career as a writer.

But this is all threatened by the Nazis coming into power and pursuing the Mann family. These sections of the book were so tense that I was afraid to read on, as I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be. It was a gripping read.

Although I felt as though I was observing the Manns from a distance rather than relating to them as I have with other characters, I did feel the honesty of the prose couldn’t be underestimated. Toibin has given us an insight into Mann’s mind which reaches far beyond superficial thoughts and feelings, and brings the whole spectrum of human emotion into view.

I particularly enjoyed the references to other historical figures in this book, such as Albert Einstein and W H Auden, who was married to Mann’s daughter Erika (although the marriage was based on convenience rather than love).

It was interesting to see which roads each of Mann’s six children went down and I was constantly Googling throughout, to find images of them that Toibin had mentioned.

I didn’t, however, google Thomas Mann until I finished the book and was stunned to see the man whose life had been reading so much about. After all, he was only human.

I’m very interested in reading some of Mann’s work, after reading this treasure.

This is a bit different to Tóibín's usual theme and writings (maybe it is similar to his Testament of Mary). Sadly, I am still not sure how I feel about this book. This book dragged and given Mann existed in real life, I expected his story to be more grippingly and interestingly told. Usually I am a massive Tóibín fan but this is a bit like his first book, it didn't hit the mark.

Thomas Mann, born in 1875 in Lubeck, Germany, grew up to witness some pivotal moments in world history including two world wars. During his career as a famed writer, Mann hid his homosexuality within his words, while outwardly enjoying a stable married life with his wife Katia, and raising six children. Outspoken against Hitler and the Nazi party, Mann and his family are exiled from Germany and eventually settle in Switzerland and the United States.

The Magician is Colm Tóibín's novelisation of Thomas Mann's life from his early childhood to his eventual death, and it's clear to everyone reading this that the author must be a very big fan of Mann and his work. While a lot of what Mann did in the lead up to the breakout of WW2 was interesting, and commendable, and some of the movements of his children in the anti-fascist circles were also fascinating and deserve praise, I did find a majority of this book quite dull.

Mann comes across as quite a cold character for most of this book, though I did enjoy seeing the warmth in his character come through in the latter half of the book with his love for his youngest daughter Elizabeth and then his fondness for his grandchildren. I definitely was a lot more engaged with the second half of this story as Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power within Germany and Mann realised something terrible was happening. At the end of the day it's also hard to forget that Mann and his family were in an incredibly privileged position where they could leave their home behind before they were in danger and go somewhere else where they could upkeep the style of life they were used to. They didn't necessarily struggle or endure any hardship when it came to their exile from their home country.

It was both sad and amusing to see Mann hide a huge part of himself in this novel, and instead content himself with watching young men he found attractive while out on his walks or in other places - always looking, never touching - and then some of his children celebrate their own queerness with aplomb for the majority of their lives.

While I can't deny this book was very well written, and Colm Tóibín always excels at a gentle, slow character study within his novels (thinking Nora Webster), I do think you have to be very aware and interested in Thomas Mann to get a whole lot out of this book as I'm sure the author did while writing it.

I read this because The Testament of Mary made such an extraordinary impact of me and I loved reading another novel by Colm that rewrote Greek tragedies. And, i have to say, the breadth of the man's talent is something else as here we have another completely different subject matter - and a completely different length from the slim Testament of Mary - but it is another novel where fact and fiction have been blended sublimely to bring to life one man's story from childhood to the end of his life.

And the man in focus? Thomas Mann, a famous German novelist whose lifetime spanned an era of dramatic change in Germany, from the empire at the turn of the century, through war, Weimar and Nazism, through to a divided country - both literally and metaphorically.

I cannot emphasise this enough - you don't need to know anything about Thomas Mann or to have read any of his works to enjoy this book. I haven't read Death in Venice either but i LOVED this. For this isn't a story or fable about fame, more Colm has taken Thomas as his subject because he was a complex man whose life and personality was full of secrets and contradictions.

A happily married man who harboured a closeted desire for men; a private man who craved recognition; a man who got public recognition but none from his family; respected by many but resented by his children; and a man who clung onto a vision of Germany that his fellow countrymen spent generations ripping to shreds.

This is an epic but so easily readable novel about a man who was so revered but was just constantly out of step with the time he lived in. Beautiful.

Ugh, okay. I've sat with this for a few days before writing my review because I think I need to go deeper than "this was shite".

Firstly, it wasn't shite. The writing, as with the other book I've read by this author (Brooklyn), was lovely. The first 10%, honestly, made me think that this was going to be a five-star read. "Hooray!" I thought, "I have finally found a historical writer that I like that doesn't act like a pompous bellend on Twitter!"

But as the book began to drag, and get weird and incestuous, I decided to look our boy Thomas Mann up properly.

This, I should have said, is a partly fictionalised book based on the very real author Thomas Mann, who by all accounts led a fascinating life. He was an author, a Nobel Prize winner, a vocal Anti-Nazi speaker. This is part of the problem I have with this book - there are a TON of accounts about Thomas Mann. The author cites several at the end, in fact. Which leads me to ask the question - what is this book? I just didn't know what he was going for. It's fan fiction by a posher name. Which I'm fine with; if you want to be the number one member of the Thomas Mann fan club then don't let me hold you back, but why you'd want to add to the already huge list of books about this man, I do not know.

Mann writes a book about his wife and her twin brother getting off with each other, and neither of them seem to have a problem with that. He writes another book after he sees a young waiter that he fancies while on holiday. A very young waiter (in Death in Venice, the protagonist is in his mid-fifties when he falls in love with a fourteen year old - many regard this as a literary classic, I just think it's a story about a dirty oul fella, but again, that's up to yourself). Mann also expressed, on more than one occasion, sexual attraction towards his own sons. I feel like this book just glosses over that last bit? There's mention of him not wanting particular diaries to become public when he has to flee Germany when Hitler rises to power, but other than that it's kinda just alluded to, and it's a weird omission given the numerous other accounts that document it (not that I WANTED to read about that).

I don't know - the writing was lovely, but I don't know why this book exists. Does the author see a bit of himself in Mann: The Writer, who wanted nothing more than to write books that the world would want to read? Or is it just a tribute? If it is, where does one acquire the neck to write about a public figure as if they're inside their head? I had a similar issue with Matrix by Lauren Groff - I just don't know why or how people think they have the right to pick a real person and then write about their life in the most intimate of ways, making stuff up to fit the narrative and omitting whatever they don't feel works. This is clearly a labour of love for Tóibín, who has held an interest in Mann for a long time going by this essay he published on the family in 2008 (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n21/colm-toibin/i-could-sleep-with-all-of-them). I imagine it's an incredible feeling to see a pet project like this come to fruition (no doubt it will garner the highest of literary accolades, given the way we treat fan fiction written by men as opposed to similar writings by women) - and I'm sure if you're a fan of Mann, and are a fan of historical fiction, you'll enjoy it. I am, unfortunately, neither.

One star for the first 10-20% - lovely.
One star for Katia - a brilliant character.

The rest of it - (I'm doing the Steve Carrell cringe face)

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC, I'm sorry I couldn't be more positive.

An incredibly well researched and detailed novel about the life of Thomas Mann. The story also spans the period of the Second World War and explores interesting opinions and points of view of that time. The intensity and focus of Mann’s writing and his hidden homosexuality is set against the backdrop of war and persecution. Toibin documents how the arts - namely literature and music - gave hope throughout this time.
I am a massive fan of Toibin’s work and now intend reading The Master, his study of writer, Henry James.

I did like the first third of this but the more I read, the less I enjoyed it. The writing was good and the story was okay but it just didn't really engage with me. The characters were written well and I liked them for the most part.

A fictionalised biography of a fascinating life that spans the most turbulent period in modern history. The accomplished writing draws you in and keep you reading, but there is something about the measured, pristine style that ultimately distances the reader from an intimate understanding of the book's complex, rather cold subject.

In this fictionalised biography, Colm Toibin reimagines the inner life of the 1929 Nobel laureate Thomas Mann, tracing Mann’s life from his childhood in the 1890s in a recently confederated Germany to his death in exile in the 1950s.

Each chapter is anchored to a specific city and year, often linked to a turning point in his life or the composition of one of his works. The thinking process behind Buddenbrooks, The Blood of the Walsungs, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, Felix Krull, and various political essays and speeches are prominently featured.

Knowing very little about Mann and his works, I approached this book as fiction and focused exclusively on how Toibin interprets the Manns as characters, without worrying about biographical accuracy.

What emerges from Toibin’s subtle narrative is an elusive and contradictory Thomas, who as a boy hid his literary ambitions, as an adolescent concealed his sexuality, and as an adult withheld his political views until it was absolutely impossible not to choose a side. I found this ambivalence truly fascinating.

His detachment from real life and his reluctance to act/react also contrast strongly with the outspoken political engagement of his brother Heinrich and his eldest children Erica and Klaus, creating tension in the family that drives the plot forward.

Katia, Thomas’s wife, is another brilliant character. In so many ways she is so much stronger, more sensible and capable than Thomas. She tacitly understands and accepts Thomas’s sexuality and she’s the one who held the family together.

The incisive character studies and the weaving together of private and public lives in a turbulent century really makes for an unputdownable read. Plus, I absolutely adore Toibin’s beautiful, cool, spare prose. It's a book I would highly recommend.

There's no doubting Tóibin's credentials as a writer, and this is a well-written and thoroughly researched book, but I just never fully connected with the characters at all. At points heavy going, but sometimes wonderful, this was a very mixed bag for me, I'm afraid.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

This is a fictional autobiography about the life and times of the German Nobel Prize wining author, philanthropist and social critic, Thomas Mann. Born in Lubeck in 1875, Mann's desire from childhood was to "write stories":. However the young Thomas proved to be unmotivated at school and was enrolled as an apprentice clerk in an insurance company. Like this school work, this apprenticeship didn't last and Mann was discharged for his lack of application. However these early days at a desk enabled him to begin writing his stories. Death in Venice on of his most famous books was written in 1912 followed by The Magic Mountain in 1924.

Mann married in 1905 and he and his wife Katia, a wealthy socialite from Munich, had six children. In 1929 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for "Buddenbrooks". Mann was a closet homosexual with an infatuation for young men and weaves this into his literary works. Two of his children were also openly bisexual and outspoken critics of Hitler and the growth of nazism. Together with his Jewish-born wife, Mann was forced to flee to the US in the 1930s. Recognised as one of the greatest authors of this time, Thomas Mann became a reserved but outspoken critic of Hitler throughout the war. He was a strong advocate for democracy but never returned to live in his home country. The Magician is an engaging account of Mann's eventful life which describes the highs of literacy awards and the personal tragedies of suicide and addiction, While not exactly a page turner, I enjoyed this portrait of a life lived through one of the most turbulent periods in our history.

The Magician is Colm Toibin's fictionalised account of the life of Thomas Mann, written in the style of a biography and covering the whole of the writer's lifespan, his time in Germany, USA and other places of refuge as the events of the twentieth century unfolded around it. It is astonishing to me that as a very lengthy account of a writer of whom I knew absolutely nothing, that it held my attention from start to finish.

Toibin is a deceptively good writer. Much of the writing seems at first prosaic, but it builds, layer upon layer, its depiction of the characters of Mann's life and the events that befell them. Every one of the wider cast of family depicted in the story is uniquely fascinating. It also evokes in gripping detail the atmosphere of Nazi Germany and the paranoia of McCarthy- era America, Highly recommended.

The Magician by Colm Toibin is a masterful, incredibly well researched novel about the life of Thomas Mann. This is true to form for Toibin who has taken other writers as the subjects of his work before, which I am constantly impressed by. I think that this impulse comes from a true love of reading and writing and I love that he pays homage to his influenced in this way. However, I think because I didn't know anything about Thomas Mann before reading this book and while I still admired the project and the writing, I didn't particularly connect to the book.

However, this novel does not only follow the history of one man but the history of Germany and Europe around the Second World War, giving several conflicting and interesting points of view. The enduring theme in the novel is about art and beauty in the face of persecution and war and horror, and I think Toibin achieves this well, in addition to his reverential exploration into the life of the artist in general, and Mann's own life.

The novel spans Mann's whole life but the ending chapters where Mann is an older man looking back and fondly doting on younger relatives, knowing the end of his life is near is particularly moving, and Toibin always deals with hard subject matters gracefully. I like that he gave a lot of importance in the story to the older man's life instead of merely writing him off as being old and not as interesting. He writes so well about aging, the body and passing of time and even though it wasn't a favorite I'm always impressed by Toibin's writing.

Beautifully written novel based on the life and writings of Thomas Mann. Great insight into his novels and into life in Germany before, during and after WW2.

To write a fictionalised account of a real life whilst remaining, in all key respects, true to the original, must be one of the most difficult things a writer can do. And when your subject is someone whose existence is as single-track, as desk bound and - honestly - as risk avoidant as that of Thomas Mann, that challenge is taken to a new level. In The Magician, Toibin succeeds in creating a fascinating, thought-provoking mix of novel and biography. I learned much about Germany during and in between both world wars, and a lot about Thomas Mann, a writer I'd previously known almost nothing about. Toibin's writing is exquisite, the attention to detail a virtue, placing you exactly in the room with the characters. But I did struggle slightly, and that is because I just did not like the main character. When war comes, when a dilemma presents - when a child dies, for god's sake! - the man simply absents himself. And whilst Toibin's efforts to depict a complex, nuanced, difficult situation is laudable (far more laudable than his subject's behaviour!) it was not sufficient to convince me. I struggled therefore to care very much what happened to Mann, or his wife - whose motivations I likewise had issues with - and found myself, as Mann got older and frailer, partly wishing him to hurry up and die. This is not to say that the novel was lacking in emotion, or ability to affect. I was moved several times - by the plight of his children, by those of his mother, his brother, his brother's wife. Just never by the problems of Mann or his wife. So, in summary. This is a deeply accomplished piece of fiction. I had no problem finishing it, long as it was. Toibin is a hugely talented writer and I look forward keenly to his next work. But. On the tricky subject of sympathy, and full in the knowledge that not every character has to be loveable, or likeable, or anything short of despicable (how many villains are brilliantly compelling, after all!), I personally found there to be an issue.

I knew nothing of the life of Thomas Mann before reading this book and I am aware that the Nobel prize winning author was a very private man. He did, however - if Colm Toibin is correct - lead a fascinating life and has a story worth telling beyond his novels. From his childhood in Lubeck and his relationships with his siblings to his eventual life in American, Mr Toibin takes us with him.

I’m not sure I would have picked up a biography of Thomas Mann although I have read a couple of his novels. I like Colm Toibin’s books and this is an excellent story well told. The insights of a life on the edge where the inner thoughts are recorded is beautifully done. Especially well captured is the relationship between Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia. Given his homosexual experiences, it seems unlikely that the marriage will succeed but they have six children and many adventures.

There is much here and the book is long because each of the children deserve a story of their own and Thomas and his competitive brother - also a writer - take a bit of time to describe. I think the book succeeds because of Mr Toibin’s excellent writing and the huge character and life of his well chosen subject. Having read this I am going back to reread Mann’s Magic Mountain and to read some of his other books.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley.