I didn’t really have a lot of interest in this book to start with. It’s historical fiction, and it’s based on the life of an author I’d never heard of, let alone read (Thomas Mann). But it was on my second round of judging for the BookTube Prize, so I had to give it a go! I’d never read any books by Colm Tóibín before, but my mother loves his writing. And I can certainly see why.
This is the quintessential family saga. It follows Thomas Mann from his early childhood as the son of an important man in their German city and a Brazilian mother who is vibrant and definitely draws attention. As the book progresses, he has to establish his own path as an author, going against the wishes of his mother who wants him to settle into comfortable but boring employment.
I don’t want to go through his whole life as that would give away the story and also be a difficult undertaking. But lets just say that the main themes of the book are war, relocation, exile, family, fatherhood, being a writer, sexual confusion and, finally, aging. The Mann family were numerous but often troubled. They regularly find themselves at odds with society or loving the “wrong” people. The Mann children often push against one another and compete for their parents’ affections, and all have their own challenges.
One of the things I really loved about this book is the centering of female power. Katia, Mann’s wife, is very much the architect of not only his life, but his career. She is able to manage a whole raft of children, moving multiple times to different countries with vasty different languages and customs, and seems to take it all in stride. There’s also another woman who is the wife of a newspaper magnate who seems to have every connection and access to every string upon which to pull as needed. She can make most things happen, even when they seem impossible – a very useful person to have on your side in war time. It’s clear that while Mann was undeniably a talented author, it’s his wife who enabled him to have such a successful career. Without her steady hand on the wheel, his career might have been very different.
I liked a few things about this book. The first, and most important, is the writing. It wasn’t one I couldn’t put down, but given my lack of initial interest, I was pleasantly surprised by how engaged I was. Tóibín definitely has a beautiful and evocative writing style, and excels at scene-setting and character development. The second is the complexity he allows for his characters. There is a lot of exploration of people who don’t quite fit into society’s expectations of them – most notably the main character who not only defies his planned life, but also has some definite homosexual leanings that are deftly built into the background of an outwardly “respectable” man throughout the story. There was an eclectic feel to the Mann family, and a definite sense of individuality to each character.
I also really liked the way that the relationship between Mann and his wife, Katia, was developed. I got the sense that while they both conformed to social convention and became well respected figures of their age, both had private thoughts and desires that didn’t necessarily align completely with that. But in this they created a partnership, and while it seems that there was an awareness of each other’s more hidden feelings, there was also an acceptance and mutual respect that I found really interesting, particularly for the time. I don’t know if it always served Katia as well as it did her husband, but it was interesting nonetheless.
I am not the intended audience for this book. In the least. And yet, I did enjoy it. I’m left with some powerful mental images it evoked, and some interesting things to consider. I definitely think that anyone who’s interested in historical fiction, Thomas Mann or family sagas would adore it. In the end it got the third place for my round of judging.
Colm Tóibín’s new novel opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles.
The Magician is an intimate, astonishingly complex portrait of Mann, his magnificent and complex wife Katia, and the times in which they lived—the first world war, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Cold War, and exile. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Magician
Author: Colm Tóibín
Series: No
Edition: Paperback/Audiobook
Published By: Scribner/Audible
Released: September 7, 2021
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Thomas Mann
Pages: 498
Date Read: June 5-16, 2022
Rating: 7.5/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.06/5 (7,965 ratings)