Book Review: The Emigrants, by W.G. Sebald (1992; transl. M. Hulse, 1996)

 

 

This book was recommended reading by a contributor to the podcast Talking Politics (I think), and (I think) the lady who recommended it stated that only towards the end of the book does it become clear what overarching point the author is trying to make. Well, my intellect would certainly not suffice for a political podcast and, alas, I didn’t find that the close of the book particularly clarified anything. However, I did very much enjoy reading The Emigrants, I would recommend it as highly as it was recommended to me, and the various things I think (I think) about it are outlined below…

Firstly, is the prose, the style of writing, and the slightly distracted thread of the narrative. It is akin to a cloud, something you can admire but cannot grasp, with a true form one can only guess at. The drift of the various stories told in the book are undoubtedly linked by a certain melancholy. Or perhaps the butterfly catchers that feature sporadically through the book represent something of the nature of the work, attempting to put a net around something delicate, fragile, and beautiful. I’m not sure if this is a result of the book’s translation from its original German into English, but most likely it was intentional, or simply the mark of the mind of the author – betraying a thoughtful and reflective person, somebody who likes to observe and describe, but not dictate, and who allows the reader free to find their own meaning.

So the narrative reads like it flows out of the mind, as if the destination of the sentence, let alone the paragraph or the chapter, was undecided at the time it was commenced, or as if the different characters in the book are sat across from you in the gathering gloom, recalling the oddities and circumstances and hardships of their lives from the depths of their recall, speaking more to themselves as to anyone else, like the sort of one-way conversation you might have had with an elderly relative. Indeed, there are so many unassuming anecdotes throughout this book, I am sure they will continue to surface fleetingly in my mind over years to come. I suspect also that I might be uncertain of exactly where they came from. Examples I recall now are the body, lost for more than 7 decades, released from a Swiss glacier; the teacher who only taught with all the windows wide open, whatever the weather; the deserted American sanatorium, an ‘extravagant timber palace’, abandoned to be gnawed to destruction, along with its records and memories, by the mice, and the woodworm, and the death-watch beetles; or the ‘teas maid’, the gadget from the 1960s Manchester hotel, which served as both an alarm clock and a tea-making device, or even the endearing description of the tumble-down Norfolk garden at the very opening of the book.

Even now, a week or so after I completed it, I am finding it hard to pin down anything especially concrete to say about the book. The clue, however, is in the title. The author himself is an emigrant, born and raised in southern Germany, but relocated to Norfolk, via Manchester, England. The book recalls the stories of four separate characters, all of them Jewish emigrants themselves, who influenced the author’s life at certain points – the teacher, an uncle, a landlord, and a reclusive artist.

Their individual stories are there for you to read. But what is it that ties them all together? Undoubtedly it is the displacement they have experienced, that sense of being alien, or a little bit lost. A degree of loneliness seems to persist with each of the subjects. There is also a historical connection, with the Jewish characters having roots tracing back to Germany, and the fate of their lives being dictated by those most turbulent years of 20th century Europe. There is also the trauma of being rejected by a place you considered home, persecuted by those you considered neighbours, being left to grow old with memories that trickle incessantly into what you have lost. So, on reflection, I would say the book is a study of human nature, how lives become trapped by circumstance, how people respond and react to situations they have no control over, the memories we choose to retain, and those that we cannot lose, how eccentricity is born, and how regrets become tormenting, and life unbearable.

The description of places in the book are also endearing, from the garden in Norfolk to parts of Switzerland and Germany with which I am familiar, to the description of Manchester as a decaying city in the 1960s, repeated in the 1980s. The included photographs also contribute significantly to the book’s feel. Images not captured for the book, just lingering reminders of the passing of time, all black and white, each rather cold, and somehow very silent.

 

Favourite Character: Of the four characters that make up the book, probably the teacher, Paul Bereyter, appeals to me the most, in the way that a good and inspiring teacher appeals to anyone.