Toibin imagines the life of Thomas Mann, focusing less on his work and artistic development than on his unconventional marriage, his complicated relationship with Germany through both world wars, and his homoerotic preoccupation with young men. A vivid and engaging read if you're curious about Mann, particularly the strains of suicide, open homo- and bisexuality, and marriages of convenience that seem to recur in the family.
However, be warned:
If you like intelligent, disturbing literary thrillers that challenge your beliefs about violence and its perpetrators, this book’s for you.
Two young teenaged girls have turned up dead in the past year in a small Missouri town. A Chicago reporter, who grew up there, is sent to cover the story. She has recently emerged from a stay in a psych ward and is struggling to refrain from her habit of carving words into her own skin.
Trauma
At 66, when I look back over my early life, I see the typical manifestations of trauma. I began to “forget” the abuse— dissociate---well before the age of 5. I experienced a first depression at 12. By 14 I had developed an eating disorder, alternating periods of anorexia and bingeing. At 17, I considered suicide. In college, I would walk for hours to calm anxiety attacks that seemed to come from nowhere. In my early 20s, I fell in love with an alcoholic, a relationship that ended after two and a half exhausting years of anger and mistrust.
Powers is in a league all his own when it comes to writing about the environment and impending climate catastrophe. He speaks with crystalline emotional and moral clarity about the natural world crashing down around us; we should be terrified, he says, and we must confront the political and economic powers invested in keeping us blithely indifferent.
