Robert Seethaler - The Tobacconist

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Truly excellent

I thought The Tobacconist was excellent.  I was wary of it because it reflects closely in time and place some of my family's most harrowing history, meaning that if it were badly done I would hate it.  In fact, it is exceptionally well done, and one of the best novels I have read about the onset of Nazism.

Part of the reason it is so good is that although it is set in Vienna in 1937 and 1938 around the time of the Anschluss, the main story is of the coming of age of Franz, a young, naïve country boy who arrives in Vienna to take a job in a tobacconist's shop.  Franz is a wonderful protagonist; he is innocent but intelligent, honest and thoughtful and he observes what is happening with the somewhat bemused eye of decency.  He also forms a friendship with Sigmund Freud, who is a customer, with whom he discusses things, including the turmoil of his teenage heart, which is beautifully depicted.  The political turmoil is a well-drawn backdrop to this for much of the book, and is all the more potently depicted for not being heavy-handedly in the foreground.

Robert Seethaler creates a superb sense of time and place, often through the observation of minutiae (including the way things and people smell), and Franz's reflections, self-doubt and sometimes plain bewilderment in the face of both falling in love and of the rise of thuggery and vicious political control was very real to me.  We also get little vignettes of things like the stolid, elderly postman who is uneasy about some of what is happening, but manages to put it aside because, well, it doesn't seem *that* bad, he isn't really affected personally and he needs to complete just a few more years trouble-free service for his pension.  Again, an utterly convincing portrait of how a basically decent person can shut out and hence allow evil.

I also like the observations which sometimes remain very pertinent today, like "The morning edition's truth is practically the evening edition's lie; though as far as memory's concerned it doesn't really make much differencr.  Because it's not usually the truh that people remember; it's just whatever's yelled loudly enough or printed big enough."

This is a fairly short but brilliant book.  It is superbly translated, so that all the author's insights into character, place and so on come over perfectly, and it is insightful, readable, rather uplifting in places as Franz's integrity shines through, and ultimately very moving.  This is one to keep and re-read many times, I think.  Very warmly recommended.