Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"I have this sensation that people like me should be told to either disappear or else get remodeled like the old buildings.", July 17, 2006
This review is from: The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)
Published by New Directions, noted for its publication of experimental fiction and literature from Europe, The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt begins as an existential investigation by a self-conscious 46-year-old man into who he is and why he behaves as he does. The man is seeking "inner authorization" for a life that has little meaning for him, and by the end of his philosophical and psychological journey, he has come to new understandings. Though the premise is weighty, the book is fun to read.
The unnamed speaker has been working for seven years as a "shoe tester," a man who walks around Frankfurt testing shoes and submitting reviews of them to the manufacturer. The speaker enjoys this job, as it gives him unlimited opportunity to muse about his life, observe people from the past with whom he has had relationships, and contemplate "the collective peculiarity of all life" while he walks. He thinks about his childhood, his failed relationship with former girlfriend Lisa, and his lack of professional motivation, and the reader observes him as he has an afternoon interlude with his hairdresser, begins a new relationship, talks with a friend who is a failed photographer, gets a drastic cut in salary, and begins work as a vendor in a flea market.
The speaker's serious philosophical statements and overwrought self-examination might become tedious if it were not for the fact that the book contains a great deal of quiet humor. The author's sense of irony and his witty appreciation of absurdity become more obvious in the second half of the book when the speaker attends a life-changing cocktail party and (ironically) achieves a new appreciation of life as a result. The tongue-in-cheek humor puts the speaker's new understandings into a realistic context and changes the mood from melancholy to peaceful acceptance, if not joy.
Filled with the hypersensitive and self-indulgent observations of a man who claims that he "hardly thinks at all anymore--I only look round and about," the novel shows the transformation of this character from someone who willfully closes his eyes to the world to one who looks around and begins to recognize his connections with the rest of the humanity. Slow to start, the novel becomes a delightful exploration of one man's experiences and his halting steps toward a new life. Winner in 2004 of Germany's highest literary prize, the Georg-Buchner-Preis, this novel is the first by Genazino to become available in English translation. n Mary Whipple
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rambling, walking, July 29, 2007
This review is from: The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)
The unnamed narrator of the book is a shoe tester -- a man employed by a shoe company to try their new product. He walks around the streets of Frankfurt and submits a review to the manufacturer for two hundred Marks (soon we find out that the pay is decreased to 50 Marks). Even though this seems to be an unique profession, but the brilliance of the novel is not in the feet, but in the mind of the shoe tester who is having an existential crisis. As he walks around, he gets to ramble and reflect on life, he runs into old girl friends, he manages to have a fling with a hairdresser. After the pay cut, he survives by selling the shoes at a flea market. The stream of thought comes with witty, humorous account.
What I loved about the novel, specially the first part, is the ramblings as he watches the streets. Full of witty commentary, he walks around but he does nothing. His inaction comes through with a nice a sophistication,. However, for me, the novel looses its brilliance at the end when he finds out what to do. At a cocktail party, the shoe tester jokingly mentions about an imaginary Institute for the Art of Memory and Experience, envisioning a radical new treatment that will help people rediscover experiences beyond TV, vacations, highways and supermarkets. It is good, we get to see another side of the narrator, but I would have preferred more rumination.
Wilhelm Genazino is an award winning writer. This is a nice short book, with no plot. The writer, without going into too much details, accomplishes a lot, like his narrator, by doing nothing, just rambling and walking.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moving inwards from the edge, July 29, 2006
This review is from: The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)
Genazino's narrator, mid-forties, well-educated, under-employed (he tests luxury shoes), wanders the streets of Frankfurt, observing and mentally cataloguing the trivial details of the lives he sees around him as a substitute for truly living his own. He describes himself as being "here in this world without my inner authorization," and again as "the blind passenger of my own life." He considers sending a "silence schedule" to his acquaintances regulating the few hours each week in which he is willing to be disturbed.
A typical case of alienation, one might think, verging on the sociopathic? But no. There are several other people in his life, although he affects to find them uncongenial. And he does have a sex life. Almost every chapter seems to feature some woman from his past, in one case from his present, and perhaps even from his future. The further this short but fascinating novel progresses, the more these interactions begin to matter. Although the book has virtually no plot, the nameless narrator carries the story along by his eye for telling detail, his considerable wit (even in translation), and by his almost incredulous sense that his life may take an upward trajectory after all.
This is a character that grows on you. You find yourself almost inexplicably caught up in his life, and wanting only the best for him. Despite its gray cover and philosophical air, the book is easy to read, and by NO means monochrome.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
|
