There's a joke about writers finding a way to make their short stories connect so that they can pass them off as a novel. Well, that joke became a reality here. A series of chapters that are either short stories or short polemics which revolve around the wafer thin theme of loss and time and history and blah blah yawn.

I honestly haven't been bored by a book quite as badly as I was by this one. At first glance, the writing is very good (neat and tidy) and you feel as though there is meaningful content but as the novelty value of the book continues (sporadic looks at the past that have no real connection to one another) you begin to feel drained, as though the writer is somehow stealing all the love, energy, and optimism from your very soul. Even when the book has mildly interesting chapters (actual narratives as opposed to polemics and half-formed thoughts about the human condition), it still somehow manages to fail because as soon as that chapter is over, you are instantly asked to abandon it and embrace the next thoroughly tedious chapter which is bone dry and banal. At no point can you invest in anything, not even a character who runs, like a thread, through the book. It's all just idiotic nonsense that goes nowhere masquerading as something profound and beautiful. One chapter was essentially just the narrator describing foliage and trees and animals -- like I've never encountered any of that before.

I liked the idea of the book: an inventory of things that we have lost or forgotten over the centuries, but I just don't think Schalansky had the talent to turn that into something significant or worthwhile. I was genuinely bored. It honestly did feel like nothing more than a series of jumbled thoughts thrown together without any creativity or vision into a half-baked novel. At moments, W.G. Sebald's influence can definitely be felt but where he would take you on a fascinating (at least worthwhile) historical tangent, Schalansky only manages to make the past seem dry, intangible and brittle.

The only praise I can give the book is the physical book itself. A beautiful thing with a font of gold and chapters that are separated by a black page with a faded image within it. But that's it, though. That's all I can say as a positive.