RaveThe Barnes & Noble ReviewTo lodge in its pages is to dwell at the convergence of so many images and references (e.g., biblical riffs; scientific facts; news snippets; weather, economic, and agricultural reports) as to make the thought of retaining but a smattering of its wealth doubtful after a first encounter ... Broadly speaking, Döblin — who was born Jewish but later converted to a Catholicism — accomplishes two major feats in his novel. First, he captures the frenetic, Teutonic energy that arose in the aftermath of World I before the Nazis took power ... The second overarching accomplishment of the novel is moral. In telling the story of Franz Biberkopf, the book’s central character, Döblin indicts the societal forces driving Germany to the precipice ... Döblin’s warning in the novel...\'There’s idiocy in the air, there’s hypnotism in the air, it’s in the air, it’s in the air, and it’s staying there.\' Who, in 2018, can’t relate to that?
Rafael Chirbes, Trans. by Margaret Jull Costa
PositiveThe Barnes & Noble ReviewWith the rigor of an anatomist, Chirbes demonstrates how a financial panic corrodes all manner of social interactions in a Spanish village by bringing out the worst in everybody ... On an emotional level, [the] novel makes for hard reading. Pondering our capacity for envy, narcissism, and jealousy at length, which Chirbes does for over four-hundred pages, runs counter to our instinctual avoidance of our own weaknesses.
