FINISHED READING - The Rings of Saturn by W.G Sebald

W. G. Sebald was for many decades a literature professor. A lecturer at the UEA in Norwich from 1970. Publishing his first written work After Nature in 1988, and first novel Vertigo in 1999. A series of increasingly lauded novels followed. Throughout the turn of the millennium, his reputation rose. By the publication of Austerlitz in 2001, he was being acclaimed as one of the greatest living novelists, and a potential Nobel prize winner. Unfortunately that was also the year he died of a heart attack whilst driving in December 2001, he was 57. Though there have been a number of posthumous publications since then. That reputational rise appears to now have parked itself.

The Rings of Saturn was published in 1998. The premise of the book is of a narrator, which we read to be Sebald, ostensibly taking a ramble, a walking journey around the county of Suffolk. But also a much bigger ramble. Because the book is so much more than a linear walk, its partly a historical account of places and people, but also brings in biography,  personal memoire and meditations on the human condition and fallibility. His writing style has this heightened associative drift to it, often prompted by the things he encounters. He takes up erudite diversions, veering off on fascinating tangents, where, just occasionally, he arrives right back where he started looking out over a familiar bit of East Anglia landscape.

Sebald is a readable and quietly fascinating writer. If you come expecting a perfectly formed narrative line to ride your reading upon, then he will disappoint you. He travels through the mind, its landscapes, interesting nooks and crannies.  Sebald's writing persona is as a weaver of memories, creating a tapestry of references that cross all the boundaries of time, place and cultures. You could say he is the quintessentially most post modern of writers. At times his tales remind me of the performance work of Laurie Anderson, whose pieces are similarly fascinated with storylines, the anecdotal, accidental collisions and the unexpected contrast of juxtapositions. 

The Rings of Saturn, along the way, takes in the ground breaking work of Thomas Browne, the social and economic background to why Somerleyton Hall was built, and its subsequent rather ungenteel decline. Finishing off with a brilliant flourish on the history of the silk weaving trade in Europe, and how Norwich, with the arrival of the Huguenot in the 17th -18th century became the centre of it in England. 

I first read this book in the early noughties. I'd tried Austerlitz first, which as a densely woven more darkly personal work, I found trickier to relate to.  Because he takes this ruminating wander around East Anglia, an area I love, I find myself more easily drawn into the Sebald multiverse, able to relax and enjoy the ride he takes you on. I would say The Rings of Saturn is the best entry point, from which to introduce yourself to this great novelist. If this doesn"t grab you, then nothing else of Sebald's work is likely to either. Rereading it in 2022 it has been a bit of a surprise, just how much I loved and enjoyed it all over again.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8