The Magician

After reading and loving 2024 Summer Reading Guide pick Long Island and its 2009 companion Brooklyn this year, I was eager to read more Tóibín and landed on this 2021 biographical novel based on the life of Thomas Mann. My timing was serendipitous, as I happened to pick this up not long after we returned from our family trip to Germany and it was a delight to see so many of the cities we visited referenced on the page. Despite being a German minor and having read some of his works in school, I knew little about Mann's life and found myself frequently googling and consulting my college texts to compare Tóibín's story with his source material. This was an often challenging and extremely sad work; I came away with it with a deepened appreciation for Tóibín's range. I listened to the audio version, narrated by Gunnar Cauthery.