Colm Toibin's "The Magician" - A Spellbinding Novel

Mira Leibovich: I really loved the book. Very readable, interesting and well written. Very useful as a means for escaping current terrible happenings.

United States on Oct 24, 2023

Laurie E. Huberman: A moving story about a time, a family and a man. I had read his books without ever looking closely at the man and so this was a rich experience. I was most touched by the portrait of Mann himself, surprisingly unsympathetic and wooden, contrasting with the human stories he told. Also fascinating was the centrality of his family life with hints of how this reality was woven into his novels.

France on Jul 22, 2023

Casildabenz: An outstanding Novel about a complex and complicated life of a Man who represented the old prewar generation described in Buddenbrooks and wrote about the present, Magic Mountain. He courageously chose Katia and they gave birth and raised a talented and strongly connected family, full of neurosis. Through his discipline and Rigour he was able to create a unique Oeuvre even in Exile-Bad Tœlz and Nidden celebrate him yearly with Their Thomas Mann Festivals. And maybe this Book created a Mann Mania and young people Want to discover and read him again? Thank you Colm Toibin🫶🏿

France on Jul 07, 2023

Giovanni Neri: Un libro che si legge senza difficoltà ma che descrive molto bene il mondo di Thomas Mann. Una biografia che piacerà a tutti i lettori che ammirano lo scrittore tedesco.

Italy on May 27, 2023

Kindle Customer: I read Toibin on Henry James and much admired his sensitivity and non judgemental observations… I had read Henry James many years earlier and though I resolved to go back, haven’t had time yet. I have a much more intimate relationship with Thomas Mann - being half German, brought up in a literary family for whom he represented excellence and I must acknowledge that, in my opinion, Toibin has surpassed all my expectations - his sensitivity and highly credible insights into Mann’s views on just about everything but particularly on being German through 2 world wars, on growing old, on the loss of his eldest son, on his relationship with his wife….a remarkable achievement.

France on May 05, 2023

Steven E. Sanderson: This is an outstanding read by a truly talented author, but, for all his talent, Toibin has excluded the masterwork that Mann himself considered to be his greatest written accomplishment: Joseph and His Brothers. The tetralogy is particularly relevant to The Magician, as it takes up the theme of filial resentment, forgiveness and love; the impossibility of returning to the home of one's memory; the loss of material wealth and even the conditions of free life; and so on. All of these are themes central to this novel. Moreover, Joseph and His Brothers took 16 years to write, between 1930 and 1946, a period of time central to Mann's life and to Toibin's novel. To leave out this magisterial work is an unforgivable sin of omission.

Mann is rightly considered from different viewpoints to be a novelist whose psychological focus suffuses his narratives, perhaps most vividly in Death in Venice. He also represented a formal style of writing, a longing for manners and social class from a time gone by, and the insularity of great men consorting with others of their kind. Mann appears as a kind of literary solipsist, with every part of his life knocking on the door to get into his...

United States on Oct 11, 2021

Richard Brown: Having been enthralled by Toibin's earlier novel about Henry James, 'The Master', I had high expectations for this novel. Though I found it absorbing, with many fine passages, I wasn't fired by it: I felt that key episodes were underplayed, that Toibin was too constrained by the biographical sweep of Mann's long life, that he was more interested in historical breadth than psychological depth.

One can get all the facts of the life one wants from the many biographies of Mann; what one looks for in a novel are imaginative explorations that fill in the unknowable gaps, particularly the inner life of the subject, his psychology, desires and emotions. Despite over four hundred pages that focus unrelentingly on Mann, situated within his large family, curiously we never really get to know him: that feels like a failure - intimate insights are, after all, the raison d'etre of the hybrid biographical novel. To me, after reading this serious, considered novel, Mann still remains, essentially, a mystery.

Perhaps this reflects the nature of the man himself: Mann had perforce to guard his secret homosexual identity, his most intimate desires, from almost everyone, creating a wall...

United Kingdom on Sep 29, 2021

handoc313: I have rarely — if ever — been so captivated by a historical novel. The story of life in Germany as Mann comes of age at the end of the 19th century, and of the family that he (as a closeted homosexual) and his wife build and continue to lead and support during the years Germany destroys itself, would be a major epic in itself. But the inner life of Mann — his unshakeable tenacity as a visionary writer and as the gravitational center of the lives around him — is the miracle at the center of this book. The writing is uncomplicated, but the places it takes you into the heart and soul of this man and his wife and their astonishing children, are sanctuaries of private experience and reflection of fellow human beings to which we are rarely granted entry.

The mesmerizing effects accumulate as the novel progresses, so there are almost no passages to cite that suggest, in themselves, what it is like to journey with this family. I’ve clipped a couple of paragraphs from a section I am reading now near the end of the book. Mann is in his mid-sixties, it is early in WWII, and most of the family is in southern California. Most of the book reads like...

United States on Sep 22, 2021