Admirers of Colm Toibin—best known for “Brooklyn” and “The Testament of Mary”—will see what drew him to Thomas Mann’s tormented dynasty
In Mr Toibin’s immersive novel about the author’s life and times, Mann is a consummate actor. His “distant, bookish tone” and “personal stiffness” mask a restless and conflicted soul. Most obviously, this long-married father of six, an upright pillar of German-speaking culture, learns how to cloak his homosexual desires.
In politics, too, Mann knows how to dissemble and compromise. Even when his conservative patriotism has given way to outrage at the Nazis, his courage falters and he prevaricates over taking a public stand. Slowly, when an honoured exile in America, he rises to become a champion of democracy. It takes almost until the end of his 80-year life for this great pretender to feel “he could freely speak the truth”.
The saga has other threads. Mann’s unruly brood of troubled children act out all the emotional drama that the Nobel-prizewinning author of “Death in Venice”, “The Magic Mountain” and “Doctor Faustus” forbids himself. After the suicide in Cannes of Klaus Mann—reckless, outspoken, openly gay—Michael, another of Thomas’s sons, tells him that “we, your children, do not feel any gratitude to you.
Many chroniclers, including four of Mann’s six children, have told his story. So “The Magician”, which invents dialogue but takes no flagrant liberties with facts, rests on a mountain of prior testimony. Yet admirers of Mr Toibin—best known for “Brooklyn” and “The Testament of Mary”— will see what drew him to this tormented dynasty.
From Bismarck’s Germany to the cold war, “The Magician” covers a lot of history alongside its personal tumult. With such a wagonload of baggage, the narrative sometimes feels like a trudge. But Mr Toibin shines in close-up scenes of thwarted longing, delivering a grave homage that is nevertheless flecked with irony and mischief—just the tone Mann himself perfected.
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