I was coming to this book straight off the back of a very different read and so it took a little while for my brain to re-jig itself into the narrative of this story. It is most definitely an engage brain kind of book but it was well worth the persistence (though if I hadn't read and enjoyed Hot Milk before I may have put it down). I was intrigued by the shifts in time and place and you Saul's views, thoughts, emotions compared to old Saul how memories shift and slip over time.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this one. I found Hot Milk (at least, in my imperfect recall) a bit directionless. I liked this one more
Saul is a historian, studying East Germany and about to go visit East Berlin. At the very beginning of the book he is run over at the Abbey Road crossing, and although he picks himself up and meets his girlfriend, he keeps having headaches and weird deja vu effects. Saul lost his mum at a young age and never felt like he fitted in with his working class, communist father. He wears a set of pearls from his mother, a child refugee from Nazi Germany, and likes a bit of blue eyeliner. I liked how Saul's experiences in Berlin were beyond cliche, and how his return changed how those experiences were interpreted.
"Soon I would walk away from the Alexanderplatz of the twenty- first century, past the Currywurst kiosks and fast food shops and drug dealers and buskers. A man was strumming his guitar, which he had plugged into a generator. He was singing about seeing clearly after the rain had fallen. I was not sure I could see anything clearly, never mind feel anything clearly, including the monuments that were supposed to mourn the murdered Jews, the murdered Roma, the murdered homosexuals. "
A netgalley book

This remarkable story begins simply enough with the two main characters Saul Adler and Jennifer Moreau as friends and lovers in shared accommodation in London 1988; the sudden breakup of Saul and Jennifer precedes Saul's research trip to the GDR (before reunification) where he meets and fall in love with Walter - and spends a night with Walter's sister Luna. On his return to London, Saul is involved in a car accident and the reader is then mesmerized by timelines, confused realities, fractured relationships and what seems like Saul's hospital prescribed drug-induced semi-conscious amnesia and gradual reconstruction of events of the intervening 28 years.

The Beatles' Abbey Road album cover is used as an anchor theme whilst the reunification of Germany with falling of the Germany and the falling of the Berlin wall is mirrored with the contemporary Brexit / EU fiasco.

This is a book that will continue to delight and reveal more to the reader as they read it over again.

This is quite a difficult book to review without giving away any spoilers but I will try. It starts with the protagonist, Saul, being hit by a car on the famous Abbey Road crossing in the late 80s and the events that follow. It is not long until you get the sense that something is not quite right and questions about the reliability of the narrator emerge. I was really impressed with the narrative structure of this book. It is very cleverly executed and the narrative becomes increasingly fragmented as the book progresses for reasons that I will not reveal. With a cast of interesting and complex characters and a plot that covered a lot of intriguing topics and themes, there was a lot to enjoy here. The reason I have only given the book 3 stars though is because, while I could appreciate the choice of structure and style and how fitting it was to the story, it started to frustrate me in the final third of the book. This may be just a personal taste issue but by only getting the narrator's fleeting and confused memories, it left a lot of unanswered questions and felt quite unsatisfying by the end. It was like the style replaced the plot by the end and my interest in the story waned as a result.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Well done, Deborah Levy, on cramming so much thoughtful stuff into such a relatively short book: in little more than 200pp she makes us think about reflections and connections, about time and space, about history and its formation, about families and love affairs, about death and living, about Europe and its divisions, about spectres that haunt from the future (Marx's 'there is a spectre haunting Europe') and from the past, about gender and its porosity ('he told me I was the Marie Antoinette of the family and the pearls did not help'), about what can be said and not said, about state surveillance and intimate looking, about language and translations, about doubleness and loneliness.

This is perhaps the most accessible of Levy's novels that I've read but it also requires a kind of decoding: this is a book that those of us who love classic 'close reading' can throw ourselves into joyously - in fact, it operates like poetry, not in terms of word choices but in the way words are resonant, echoing and reverberating, sometimes with different meanings ('"I did wear a tie in the GDR," I recollected. "I wore a tie when I visited Walter in Berlin last year. Before Britain set about untying its ties with Europe."')

Reading this feels easy and natural but it's a tight and carefully composed piece which rewards an attentive reading. Clever without being clever-clever, I'll be very interested to see how this does in the 2019 Booker.

After Saul Adler is hit by a car in 1988, he heads through life in a dream-like confused state. On the surface he appears fine and carries on as normal but small details throw him – familiar faces in places they shouldn’t be, the box in the driver’s hand with a man’s voice coming out of it, the references to the fall of the Berlin wall before it has happened.
The book then jumps forward in time to 2016 where Saul is hit by a car again. In 2016, his life is even more fragmented and the details are hazier but, while many aspects are left open to one’s own interpretation, we do get more answers.
It’s such an ambitious book but perfectly accomplished. Blending timelines to create wonderfully hazy memories of the protagonist’s life while revealing just enough of what’s happening in his present and along the way exploring themes of sexuality, fatherhood and identity.
I feel that many passages in this book will stay with me for a while but in particular the character Jack who appears later in the book at Saul’s bedside, clearly a main figure in Saul’s present but absent in his memories.
I’m desperate to re-read it and desperate for everyone I know to read it so I can hear their interpretations.
Hugely grateful to Penguin and Netgalley for the advanced copy.

What an intriguing opening: Is this a book or a famous record album sleeve?

Have you ever had one of those frustrating dreams which jump around in time and place?
The type which leave you both disturbed and confused?
A dream which twists your belief in reality?

Reading this book has had that effect on me.
I found it both frustrating and impossible to make any sense of what the author was trying to convey.

Does the book have the fall of the Berlin Wall? What about the Brexit vote? Does it have a plethora of interesting and believable characters? Having struggled through it I haven't a clue. This may well be a novel with a beginning, a middle and an end. However they were too well hidden for me.

I give my thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books UK for a copy in exchange for this review. Sadly this isn't a book which I would buy for a friend or recommend. Unless of course you like surreal fiction.

NO SPOILERS
“It’s like this, Saul Adler:” is a beautiful though slightly vain historian who travels to Eastern Germany just before the fall of the Berlin Wall for research purposes, maybe…

Narrated by Saul, within the first few pages there are incongruities, anachronisms and impossible insights which do raise suspicions and certainly pique one’s curiosity. He is clearly going to be an unreliable narrator but why? There is some depiction of life in GDR, which I had thought was going to be the point of the book, but I was not disappointed to find it was merely the setting, albeit an important one.

The story is presented in two parts, 28 years apart, with the latter giving the explanation, (more or less, but which?) for Saul’s unreliability, although with still enough lack of confirmation to make this a very thought provoking read.

Levy’s/Saul’s style is gentle, full of pathos, rhythmic and lulling. It is an easy, quick read which means reading it twice is not a chore and in my opinion, highly recommended. I found the second reading absolutely fascinating once I had the knowledge of the first reading. With that knowledge, the small, seemingly insignificant observations become proof of Levy’s skill. No fireworks, no action but a perfect example of how the sympathies of the reader change when we have more of the picture, when we are able to see everything.

One thing though; vegans do not eat honey...just saying!

Selected for the Booker Prize 2019 Long List at time of review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for the Advanced Reader Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Saul Adler a historian who specialises in East European and the rise and fall of communism, his father a lover of socialism and communism, His wife, Souls mother died when Soul was 12 be had a brother Matt who he didn't like much but who can read more of that because you need to read this fascinating book. The story switches from East Berlin 1988 just before the wall comes down and London (including Abbey Lane and the famous Zebra Crossing, then and now with Soul telling the story of his experiences of the two, There is a cross reference with the Beatles and the freedom of the West and the East, using London and Berlin as the examples

This is a incredibly well written book and it ties the past
and the present or rather the memory of the two in a new and refreshing way that keeps your attention. There are several twists but there is also a switch that is of earth shattering proportions that take this novel up several grades.. It had me confused at first and then had me hooked line and sinker and the book (Kindle) was hardly out of my hands until the last page.

The characters Deborah has created all come to life in a absorbing way that adds so much they are not only believable but you may find yourself wanting to meet each one even some of the fringe players I did. They are real in the fact they each have their own faults just like the rest of us I guess we will have them that's why we're all uniquely made individuals. I found my emotions involved and changed by the switching off their moods and actions. Soul the central of the whole story is challenged and I found this challenged me and my emotions sometimes he could be the star and others the challenge but whichever way I felt I could not put it down.
So yes I recommend this book very much

Saul Adler is the victim.of a road traffic accident twice, 30 years apart, on the famous Abbey Road zebra crossing. Or is he? Is either or both accident a suicide attempt? Is he actually in a coma after the second- or even the first - accident? Wish I could give a decisive answer to any of these questions but this novel left me just as baffled at the end as I was at the start. That's not to say I didnt enjoy it. Once I had overcome the sensation that this author was just too clever for me to understand, I sort of enjoyed the sense of uncertainty over what had actually happened. The writing was quirky, offbeat and very cinematic at times, but not the easiest of reads.

The book was well-written and interesting. I especially loved the first part set in Berlin before the fall of the Wall. However, the second part left me completely baffled, and I found it a struggle to finish. I felt the author was trying too hard to be clever, at the expense of the reader.

The first half of this book is like being in a dream, and the second half is a hazy attempt to untangle that dream. Like a dream, it all sits together with an unquestionable internal logic and remains whole and coherent amidst narrative ambiguities. The story is about Saul Adler, a historian of the GDR, his journey to the subject of his study in 1988 and his later attempt to piece together his life following a near-fatal car accident at the Abbey Road crossing in 2016. He is necessarily an unreliable narrator since he struggles with reality himself, and has obfuscated it with delusion, convergence and romantic fantasy. I mined the second half of the book for clues, attempting to straighten timelines and dig beneath Saul’s egocentricity to find some objectivity. Yet Saul is too blinded by his own beauty and desire to see the world around him - whilst checking on a potential fire, he gets distracted thinking about his friend finishing his moules frites and bickering with him over the bill; he acts on the assumption that his GDR counterparts can operate on their desires with the same freedoms. He is careless and cruel and callous - on his deathbed, he tells his longtime lover that ‘Everyone is replaceable but your love is not the love I want.’

I was very confused throughout most of this- it was incredibly sad, uplifting, and emotive; and I can’t decide if I loved or hated it. I did, however, enjoy reading it and would recommend that other people also read it to decide if they also love and/or hate it.

How do we piece together significant events that make up our personal life stories? Saul Adler desperately seeks to fill in the missing years of a life he has been running away from for over thirty years. In late middle-age, alone, ill and reliant on his own memories to make sense of his life, Saul searches his fragmented mind, to question the relevance and meaning of snatches of images and conversations which he’d previously disregarded. Quirky, funny, absurd and tragic.

This is an intriguing and interesting read. I feel that I need to read it again to work it all out. I really liked the writing style and the pace of the story.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
This novel has now been list for the Booker Prize and it is an interesting and at times perplexing novel. The story opens with Saul Adler, a historian, being knocked down whilst being photographed on the famous Abbey Road Zebra Crossing. He appears to be relatively unscathed and flies off to Berlin where he forms a friendship and then ends up having sex with his friend’s sister The novel is however slightly strange as Saul seems to know about the fall of the Berlin Wall before it has happened. This forms the first part of the novel.
The second section of the novel is set in the present and again Saul is hit by a car whilst walking across the Abbey Road zebra crossing. Is he alive or dead? Again Saul appears to be an unreliable narrator and despite the tragic events which occur he is shown to be selfish and we are left wondering about the truth of everything he says.
Many thanks to Net galley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

It’s London in 1988 and Saul Adler, a Jewish historian, is preparing for a visit to East Berlin. He’s been invited to visit the GDR on the understanding that he’ll write a glowing paper on the economic miracle he finds there. As a gift for the sister of his German host, who is known to be infatuated with the Beatles, he’s asked his photographer girlfriend to take a picture of him crossing Abbey Road, as John, Paul, Ringo and George had done on the cover of their legendary album. But Saul is clipped by a car that fails to stop on the crossing and though he is not seriously hurt the incident is to have long term repercussions.

Once in Berlin, Adler soon has sexual interaction with his both male host and the female Beatle fan, Luna. It’s clear that Luna is hell bent on finding a way of leaving her restricted Communist existence and of travelling to Liverpool. There is the constant suspicion that they’re all being watched, so instead Saul soon escapes back to London. This first half of the book felt fragmented and slightly off-centre to me, I couldn’t settle to it at all. There just seemed to be something about it that didn’t quite add up.

In the second half the scene moves to London in 2016. Has there been a second road accident in the same spot? It isn’t clear to me, but Saul is now hospitalised and in his semi-conscious state he revisits events and relationships from the past. Certain figures reappear in the present and I begin to understand that everything here has not quite been what it seemed. As this short tale plays out I realise that there is now a completely different interpretation of events being dangled in front of me.

It’s a very cleverly told story, in part it’s frustrating (I came close to abandoning it early on) but it’s also an insightful commentary on sexuality, betrayal and on the games that memory can play. The conclusion to this book was, to me, ambiguous – perhaps intentionally so. Even so, and perhaps partly because of this, it’s a piece that has occupied my thoughts more than most books I’ve read in the past twelve months.

Levy is an author I’ve enjoyed before (Hot Milk and Swimming Home) and here she has again she’s provided something that is challenging and refreshingly different.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Penquin Books (UK) for the ARC.
This was certainly an intriguing read - esoteric in its entirety. Not having read the author's books before I had no idea what to expect (but that's the joy of reading). I found it quite difficult to follow at times, but then as you get into the second-half of the book it does begin to make some kind of sense in a rather fragmented way.
In 1988 Saul Adler, a beautiful bi-sexual 28yr-old, gets knocked-down by a car on Abbey Road whilst he's preparing to be photographed by his girlfriend Jennifer, re-composing the original iconic Beatles album cover. Walking away with a bruised hip and scratched hand, with the photography session completed, he asks Jennifer to marry him, which precipitates their break-up. Jennifer is off to America to work and Saul is off to East Germany to study.
In the GDR we learn of Saul's father - overbearing and a hardened socialist; Saul falls in love with Walter, his translator, and takes Luna, Walter's sister, to bed. Luna needs to escape the GDR but Saul already knows the Wall will fall in another year.
Now, in 2016, Saul has had another accident with a car and is in hospital. Inexplicably Jennifer is always there.
Characters Saul met in the GDR reappear in different roles in this time-line. He doesn't understand where the last 28 years have gone - until his mind brings him answers and we gradually learn what his life has been in the intervening period, through hallucinations generated by a damaged brain.

I can't pretend to completely understand this book. There's lots of weaving through the two time periods giving differing perspectives of the same events.
It was 'interesting' and, in a way I suppose, clever, but not a style of writing which I would eagerly approach in the future.

Saul Adler is in love. His girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau is about to photograph him on the zebra crossing on Abbey Road, in tribute to the famous The Beatles shot. And then he’s hit by a car.

It’s hard to review this book without plot spoilers. The idea of the novel disorients best when the reader doesn’t know the events of 2016, nearly 30 years after first crossing Abbey Road. Our experience of time, love, pain and identity are all explored in the after effects of Saul’s collision. True recognition, foresight, all play tricks on each other and we wander through the novel seeking a sense of coherence Saul himself lacks.

As Saul travels to East Germany under the GDR, the political nature of division falls under the same surreal scrutiny.

Then there is Jennifer Moreau and her photography, her art. It forms a whole that will outlast them all, whatever that might mean.

The Man Who Saw Everything is a compulsive read. In some ways Saul is a repulsively self-obsessed character and yet this self-obsession seems to mirror our own self-centred interpretation of the time we have on earth.

I enjoyed The Man Who Saw Everything. It is elegant, clever, wistful and just a little bit sentimental. If you wonder about the ever changing interpretive nature of your own autobiography, this might be the novel for you. It didn’t hit me the way Hot Milk did, but it’s an impressively complex novel that has already, unsurprisingly, made its way onto the Man Booker long list for 2019.

In 1988 Saul Adler crosses a road and is hit by a car. He has minor injuries (although else seems very alarmed by the state of him) and goes on with his life, being dumped by Jennifer Moreau and then visiting East Berlin.

Even before he gets to Berlin, oddities start appearing on the page. He references future events he can't know yet, smells a breeze from the future, goes on and on (and on) about pineapple. He's hit by a car again many years later, in the exact same spot, and this time his mind splinters. Friends and family visit as Saul visits the distant and recent past, almost learning something about himself on the way.

This book has been Booker prize longlisted since I picked it up. I can see why. The author expertly drops in clues as to what's going on in Adler's addled mind. Saul is convincing as a self-obsessed historian who doesn't understand love. Splinters of truth shift in and out of place.

As I suggested earlier, it's a book about a man who 'almost' learns about himself. At the end, I'm still not quite convinced that he had learned anything by remembering all his failings.

I liked the book, but not as much as I wanted to. I think others will get more out of it, so this is more on me than the actual book itself. I wasn't won over by Saul, and would've preferred to spend more time with the rest of the cast of characters. I wanted to shake him! It also took til about the halfway point to fully pull me into the story.