Reading 1001 discussion

3 stars

Although this book is interesting and deftly written I never really connected with the protagonist, Austerlitz. His story was one that has always fascinated me. So many children were sent away by families and by governments. I often wonder about their stories; about where they ended up; about the lives they led and whether they ever located their birth families. So I thought I would love this book.

I am a reader who cares most about character development. For me that is far more important than plot. But if you are the opposite you will likely love this one. The story is intricate and complex. Really it is a story embedded in a story embedded in another story. And Sebald writes that intricate tale with careful attention to the details. It is interesting and for that the book is good. I just needed a more emotional connection to Austerlitz.

Rating: 3 stars


A moving story about a boy raised in Wales who later learns that he is actually of Czech heritage, sent to the UK via the Kindertransport. He searches for his family and learns their fate.

The writing is extremely beautiful in terms of language. It is very difficult to read in terms of format, however. There are very few, if any, paragraph breaks. I felt that the writing, as a whole, kept me at arms length, making it difficult to fully identify with main character in the way I should.

Overall, I like this, but I feel I should have liked it a lot more than I did.

2 stars
To preface: this style, similar to stream of consciousness, is not my cup of tea. Then to compound it with very long paragraphs caused my mind to wander. The sentences were beautiful, and the story was one I wish would have been told with a different style. If it had been, I’m sure I would have loved it.

Rating: 3 stars

I feel like I should have liked this book more than I did. Austerlitz is ultimately about identity, and the story is compelling (the main character was one of the children sent away on Kindertransport before WWII), but I never really felt like I connected with the book. The writing is very good, and I actually kind of liked all of the architectural discussion, but I wasn't crazy about the style.

4 stars

** spoiler alert ** The writing was utterly absorbing, the background heartbreaking, the characterisation fantastic; everything about this book was brilliant apart from the ending. There is no conclusion, take from that what you may, but to me it seems like this fantastic piece of literature just stops. Of course, there is no easy ending when dealing with family displacement from WW2 or the mental health of survivors and the world does keep on turning even after these awful events but, I would have liked the ending to this story tied up. It reads like a biography even though it is fiction (I kept forgetting that) and so doesn't a good biography need a conclusion? I might be missing something but for this reason I gave it 4 stars even though it probably deserves 5.

This earned a solid 5 stars from me. The writing was brilliant and intriguing. Although it was fiction it read like a biography, and it was interspersed with photos, pretty grainy in my edition, but that may have been deliberate. The story was framed. It is the story of a person named Jacques Austerlitz who quite late in life discovers that he was a Czech refugee who was brought up in ignorance of his background by an austere religious couple in Wales. Austerlitz is fascinated by historical architecture and his story, whiich he relates to the narrator over many years in a series of chance encounters which are too coincidental to be really believable. Austerliz recounts stories from people he meets, so the book reads as a story twice removed. Some readers have found this distancing off-putting, the "Austerlitz said that so-and-so said" over and over again, but I really liked it. The fact that Austerlitz had buried memories that were only revealed to him later in life resonated with me. Although my story is much less dramatic, I also buried deep within the desire to know my origins until my adoptive parents died. Within minutes of my mother dying I was searching her documents for any trace of my parenthood. I only discovered who my father was at the ripe old age of 74. So the theme of repressed memory was poignant. My only criticism of the book is that it ended really abruptly with no resolution. I wondered if the writer had really finished it or had intended a different ending.

I listened to this book and I might have been lucky that I didn't read it as I guess the structure of the book is one of no paragraphs and has sentences that go on and on. One is seven pages long. Listening to the story, the narrator tells you in first person of his friendships with Austerlitz (a boy who was part of kindertransport) and sometimes it is Austerlitz first person story. Austerlitz did not know his story and by finally searching back he discovers his ties and how WWII impacted his life and his family life. It is a story of search for identity. Also noted by others is that time is a theme and water represents time. Also there are three times that Noah's ark is mentioned. This is W. G. Sebald's last book he wrote and the first one that I've read by the author.

Awards;
National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction, 2001)
New York Times Best Books of the Year (2001)
Koret Jewish Book Awards (2002)
And many more.

I gave this 4 stars and found it to be very impressive writing.
The story revolves around the themes of memory and displacement as our Main Character, Austerlitz, shares his life's story over multiple listening sessions with our narrator/writer. We learn nothing about this narrator/writer other than that he travels and he listens, and although we do learn a great deal about the facts of Austerlitz' life we miss out on his emotional highs and lows and are constantly pointed to his fears, his anxieties and his sense of not having a place in the world. Austerlitz has dedicated a great deal of his life to grand architectural monuments such as railway stations and forts and these often serve as replacements for his true feelings....for example: a fort is designed to be impregnable and yet the forts he discusses were overwhelmed by new warfare technology or were simply "gone around". The writing is quite unique, the author includes pictures which serve to highlight certain aspects of the book and the whole story is told in 5 paragraphs and 3 "sections" which start with an asterisk. However, the flow worked well, I thought, and the book stands out as being very modern in style and subject matter and yet not difficult to read.

*** 1/2

This is another perspective of the Holocaust, this time through a character who discovers and searches details of his origins as a boy who was sent to England via the Kindertransport just before WWII. While the writing style feels like stream of consciousness, it was anything but that; the story is told by the narrator, who was told by Austerlitz, who was told by other witnesses, mimicking the pattern of oral tradition. This pattern hints at the main theme of the book, the evanescence of memory, which is sometimes accelerated through deliberate human action. I liked the flow of the recollections, with its varying rhythm, even though at times it felt a bit too long or it was not obvious to find the significance of specific passages. However, I am sure that my rating and appreciation of this novel would go up on a second reading of the book.

*** 1/2

This is another perspective of the Holocaust, this time through a character who discovers and searches details of his origins as a boy who was sent to England via the Kindertransport just before WWII. While the writing style feels like stream of consciousness, it was anything but that; the story is told by the narrator, who was told by Austerlitz, who was told by other witnesses, mimicking the pattern of oral tradition. This pattern hints at the main theme of the book, the evanescence of memory, which is sometimes accelerated through deliberate human action. I liked the flow of the recollections, with its varying rhythm, even though at times it felt a bit too long or it was not obvious to find the significance of specific passages. However, I am sure that my rating and appreciation of this novel would go up on a second reading of the book.