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Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald - 4 stars - My Review

“Like a tightrope walker who has forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other, all I felt was the swaying of the precarious structure on which I stood, stricken with Terror at the realization that the ends of the balancing pole gleaming far out on the edges of my field of vision were no longer my guiding lights, as before, but malignant enticements to me to cast myself into the depths.”

This book is a story about Austerlitz’s life, as narrated by an unnamed friend. Austerlitz migrated as a young child from Czechoslovakia to the UK just prior to WWII. The Welsh foster family that took him in did not give him any background about his origins. He experiences snippets of memory, resulting in (eventually) a search to determine his identity and what happened to his family.

“I felt that the decrepit state of these once magnificent buildings, with their broken gutters, walls blackened by rainwater, crumbling plaster revealing the coarse masonry beneath it, windows boarded up or clad with corrugated iron, precisely reflected my own state of mind...”

This is not an easy read. It is filled with lengthy, stream-of-consciousness sentences with no chapter breaks. It is sprinkled with photographs of architectural sites such as the train stations that evoke the Kindertransport and trains that carried deportees to the camps. It is an amalgamation of architectural, historical, and personal details. The reasons behind the detailed descriptions of architecture and fortresses in the beginning will eventually become apparent, but it takes patience and is not one to rush through.

It is meditative and subtle. It examines the impact of the traumatic events of WWII (which are never specifically depicted) that reverberate years later. We follow Austerlitz, via the narrator, to places that were part of the horrible events, but since his visits occur years afterward, it creates a feeling of internal dissonance (in Austerlitz and in the reader). It was not my favorite in terms of reading experience, but it certainly will linger in my thoughts.

“In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long.”