Serious readers and serious writers have a contract with each other,’ Deborah Levy once wrote. ‘We live through the same historical events, and the same Pepsi ads. Writers and readers, nervously sharing this all too fluid world, circle each other to find out what the hell is going on.’
Figuring out what the hell is going on within the fluid worlds of Levy’s fiction is not always straightforward. While other authors are increasingly drawn to autofiction, for Levy, uncertain times, it seems, call for uncertain realities. The characters in The Man Who Saw Everything shape-shift, and time bends back and then twists upon itself again. Objects and animals — wolves and jaguars; sunflowers and cherry trees; a string of pearls and a toy train — echo throughout like leitmotifs. It may be best not to try to pry apart the seams and just enjoy looping the loop along Levy’s carefully crafted Möbius strip.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize, The Man Who Saw Everything joins Levy’s two most recent novels, which made the Booker short list: Swimming Home (2011) and Hot Milk (2016). It opens in 1988, with 28-year-old historian Saul Adler struck by a Jaguar as he tries to cross Abbey Road. The car’s wing mirror splinters, launching us into Saul’s kaleidoscopic vision of events. The driver is dubious about Saul’s age, and a ‘small, flat, rectangular object’, with a voice emanating from within, lies in the road — making us wonder whether we are indeed where (and when) Saul says we are. Walking away from the accident bruised but intact, he visits his girlfriend, Jennifer, who sleeps with him and promptly dumps him.
Saul then travels to East Berlin for research, bringing along the ashes of his recently deceased communist father.
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