The Tanners

July 1, 2009
Those who search for beauty, muses Walsers peripatetic protagonist as he wanders through a working-class neighborhood, having successfully convinced his landlord to forgive his unpaid rent, must oftentimes feel that the mere search for beauty in this world gets you only so far. Therein lies the fundamental tension and emotional core of this novel, which follows the interactions of Simon, our protagonist, with his dispersed siblings and reveals a landscape variously enraptured and achingly sad. Unlike his scholarly older brother or his risk-adverse sister, Simon refuses to be anchored to a profession, instead preferring to punctuate his long walks with piecework at the copyists office or to rely on the kindness of strangers. Although sharing an affinity for natural beauty with his second brother, a painter, Simon perhaps has the most in common with his hinted-at third brother, lost to mental illness. Beneath Walsers placid, august prose lies a gnawing ambivalence about the relationship between life and art and betweenindustry and Romanticism. Fans of W. G. Sebald will particularly enjoy Walsers contemplative prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)