Book Review: "Transit" by Anna Seghers

This book may be better written than others, but there is a real lack of philosophical reflection passages for a book that claims to be most about the existential. When it does happen, it is well written. But it just does not do it enough nor does it go in-depth enough about the philosophical viewpoint of the narrator. I think that this is because the character has no real traits that match up or associate with the author and so the author finds it difficult to assume the existential points in his head without being reductive. It is played safe, but research could have made the character a lot more well-built and thoroughly examined. I feel like we just get one thing after another and there is no real time to stop and stand, just admiring the characters and their inner beings. This obviously makes the relationships between characters suffer as we do not feel like we know them enough to care about them properly.

Let us now have a look at some passages that I thought were well written in order for us to focus on the positives of this novel instead of focusing on what I particularly did not enjoy.

"She handed me a key with a metal number tag. The corridor was blocked by dozens of pieces of luggage and I had a hard time pushing my way to the room I'd been assigned. The baggage belonged to a group of Spaniards, I discovered. Men and women who were all planning to leave that night via Casablanca to Cuba and from there to Mexico. I felt reassured. So he was right after all, I thought, that boy on Rue Longuin in Paris by the fence of the Mexican Consulate. Ships were leaving. They were in the harbour ready to sail. As I was falling asleep that night I felt as if I were on board a ship, not because I had heard so much about ships or wanted to be on one, but because I felt dizzy and miserable, overwhelmed by a surging mass of impressions and sensations I was no longer able to understand. In addition, a racket intruded on my consciousness from all the sides as if I were sleeping on a slippery wooden plank in the midst of a drunken drew..."

This one is a great example of existentialism seeing as there are these mass groups of people, suitcases everywhere and the entire surrounding area is filled with stuff but he is all by himself. The next part of the passage is the best though.

"I dreamed I had left the little suitcase somewhere. I was searching for it in the most ridiculous places: back home in the boys' school I attended, at the Binnets' apartment in Marseille, in the farmyard at Yvonne's and on the Normandy Docks. And that's where it was, the little suitcase, upright on a gangplank, planes diving down. I ran over to get it, deathly afraid."

There are quotations about the atmosphere as well which are few and far between but when they do appear, they contribute as one of the redeeming factors of the book:

"The sun disappeared behind Fort St. Nicolas. It was six o'clock. Casually I looked over the heads of the people toward the revolving door. It was turning again. A young woman entered. What should I tell you about her? I can only say, she entered. The man who committed suicide on the Rue de Vaugirard would have expressed it differently. Don't expect me to describe her. I can only say she entered. That afternoon, I couldn't have told you whether she was a blonde or a brunette, a woman or a girl. She entered. She stopped and looked around. There was an expression on her face of tense expectancy, almost fear. As if she hoped, and yet was afraid, to find someone here. Whatever she was thinking, it had nothing to do with visas. "

So there we have it. A book which has little redeemable factors for me as I like it heavy on the long, flowery description but, would probably be someone else’s taste. I can honestly say though - it is definitely not mine.