Most novels I've read by Tóibín get their quality from the author's wonderful capacity of describing subtle emotional and relational developments in the lead characters, as in "The Testament Of Mary", "Brooklyn" or "Nora Webster". In "The Magician", his approach is different. He tells the story of the life of Thomas Mann, the German Nobel Prize Winner of literature and author of iconic novels such as "Death in Venice", "The Magic Mountain" and "The Buddenbrooks", but instead of using his successful stylistic narrator skills, Tóibín takes a more distant approach, describing and fictionalising the life of his main character.
But that's a wrong characterisation: Thomas Mann is barely present in the novel, as if he's the absent person in his own biography. The various members of his family are far more present than Mann himself: his brother Heinrich, his mother Julia, his wife Katia, his wife's brother Klaus, his children Erika and Klaus. The background of the rise of nazism in Germany, the wars, the life and power of the elites and the rich are well depicted and give a great view of the context at that time, including the differences in political opinions within the same family. While brother Heinrich takes a very clear communist viewpoint, Thomas again is more reserved, apparently afraid to pronounce himself, more protective of his family and his literature.
It is of course the choice of any author to switch styles, tone and approach with each novel. The distant style used here somehow blocked my own entry in the novel as a reader: I was watching it from the outside, instead of living it from the inside. And I doubt that this could have the idea from the beginning.
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