4.5. To take a terrible and horrifying time in history, the Nazi invasion of Austria, and be able to render a story infused with tenderness and beauty, takes a great deal of talent. A young man, Franz, sent from the Lake District by his mother, to help an old friend of hers, a Tobacconist by trade, has a gradual awakening and loss of innocence with the things he sees happening. Yet, he refuses to let this define him, and is determined to live his life the best he can. He meets Sigmund Freud, asks him questions, sits with him on a park bench , trying to find the answers in how to find happiness, from this great man. The answers he receives leads him to seek out new experiences, falling in love for the first time.

The prose in this book is beautiful, so many poignant moments are captured by this amazing author's words. Terrible times too, all around young Franz, who see things he only understands, gradually. He never gives up though, continues to try to live his life honoring those he loved who are gone, to his best capabilities. In all ways a book whose execution filled me with awe. A book to be read and savored or as my friend Cheri said, slowly. There is sadness too, how could there not be, but more importantly hope and the spark that ignites one to keep trying, never give up until forced. That is this book, and it is an amazing feat of writing.

ARC from edelweiss.

Having absolutely LOVED "A Whole Life" I was excited to get my hands on "The Tobacconist" by Robert Seethaler. I'm happy to report that I wasn't disappointed. Seethaler's wonderful subtle prose, where he says so much with simple nuances, prevails again.
Set in Vienna in the period leading up to World War II, the story revolves around Franz, an apprentice at a tobacconists frequented by Sigmund Freud. Franz falls for a Bohemian exotic dancer called Anezka, but his naivety when faced with beauty, leave him exposed to the wiles of a wicked woman. He seeks counsel from Freud, who shares his bafflement of the ways of womankind, forming an unlikely bond and friendship. However, as the Nazis arrive in Vienna and the anschluss begins, the two men must decide whether they should remain or flee the incoming regime.
This is another wonderful piece of writing from Seethaler, set against the backdrop of a horrific time in history, that shines a light on both the evil that men do and the random acts of kindness and generosity. Hugely recommended.

The story starts pretty strong and interesting with young Franz and his mother living in an idyllic lake district of Austria. This peaceful life of Franz is changed forever by his mother arranging an apprenticeship for him at his friend’s tobacco shop in Vienna. Reluctantly, Franz travels to Vienna in 1937, a couple years before WWII breaks. While apprenticed, he meets many regulars. Among them he makes acquaintance with then already famous Professor Sigmund Freud. And shortly after, starts hearing and seeing anti-Semitism.

At this point, you’re hoping that through Frank’s & Freud’s friendship you would get to know the famous Freud. But instead Frank falls for a girl and most of his time is spent on dreaming about her or chasing her. We don’t really get to know Freud.

Once Frank meets a girl, this story loses its captivation.

”One Sunday, in the late summer of 1937, an unusually violent thunderstorm swept over the mountains of the Salzkammergut. Until then, Franz Huschel’s life had trickled along fairly uneventfully, but this thunderstorm was to give it a sudden turn that had far-reaching consequences. As soon as he heard the first distant rumble of thunder, Franz ran inside the little fisherman’s cottage where he lived with his mother n the village of Nussdorf am Attersee and crawled into bed to listen to the unearthly racket from the safety of his warm and downy cave. The weather shook the hut on every side. The beams groaned, the shutters banged outside, and the wooden roof shingles, thickly overgrown with moss, flapped in the storm. Rain pelted against the windowpanes, driven by gusts of wind, and on the sills a few decapitated geraniums drowned in their tubs. The iron Jesus on the wall above the old clothes box wobbled as if at any moment he might tear himself from his nails and leap down from the cross and from the shore of the nearby lake came the crash of fishing boats slammed against their moorings by the pounding waves.”

When Franz is only seventeen, his mother sends him to work for an old friend of hers, Otto Trsnyek, who is a tobacconist with his own shop in Vienna with newspapers, cigarettes and “all the trimmings.” He’s only ever left the Salzkammergut twice before, and he thinks of the life he’s lived here near the lake with his mother, and this new life he’s poised to embark upon.

”’This is something different’, he said quietly to himself. ‘Something completely and utterly different!’ In his mind’s eye the future appeared like the line of a far distant shore materializing out of the morning fog still a little blurred and unclear, but promising and beautiful, too.

Trsnyek was granted the tobacconist’s shop a year after the end of the First World War, where he lost his leg, and so through the compensation law for invalids, he obtained his shop. He’d lived there since, becoming another fixture in town.

As tensions rise between the years 1937 – 1938, Trsnyek becomes known for serving everyone, and as banners with swastikas begin to fly downtown, those who support Hitler’s agenda begin to be openly hostile. He continues to serve the Jewish people there, including Dr. Sigmund Freud. Freud becomes somewhat of a confidant and mentor of young Franz, who becomes smitten with a young Bohemian woman who has disappeared. Being uneducated in the ways of love and women, Franz turns to Freud to help him understand what he should do next.

A coming-of-age story, an ode to the wisdom of a generation who has seen it – if not all, then certainly more than a boy still in his teens. Unrequited love, a love story of the innocence of first love and the willingness to be all, do all for that person, that it will surely make them love you in return… or break your heart. A story of the ugliness of these terrorizing, terrifying acts of malice and hatred. A story of those who stood by and watched, and those who were forced to leave in order to live.

Not that long ago, I read Seethaler’s “A Whole Life: A Novel,” which I loved, and so when I saw that this was soon-to-be-released as a paperback, I was more than pleased to get a copy to read. With prose that is simple and profound, this story set in an atmosphere of the hatred born of one man’s quest for ultimate power, where every day seemed fraught with peril. Eighty years in the past, and yet this seems so very current.


Recommended


Pub Date: 05 Sept 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by House of Anansi