Book Review: "Vertigo" by W.G Sebald

When it comes to WG Sebald, I have to admit I am not very well-versed. I have yet only really read Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz - even those were a while back. So, when it comes to Sebald - I am still fairly new.

WG Sebald was a German author who grew up in the dark wake of the decline and fall of Nazi Germany. This means that post-war Germany actually appears a lot in his work as his father was also a prisoner of war in the final days of World War 2. Vertigo was his 1990 novel and honestly, I found it quite difficult to read, though I enjoyed it.

There are four sections in the book which include people such as Stendhal, Franz Kafka and Casanova. The way in which the story is told is focused on the introspective, a characteristic of WG Sebald's later writing, especially Rings of Saturn. The writing itself may not be as clear as I would have expected and often, it is difficult to decipher the atmosphere - but I will say it is well written because of its attempt to connect various different subjects together with some sort of ease.

The story feels almost like a dream narrative encoded with paroxysms of various kinds - it isn't the kind of book where you would read it with a cup of coffee in bed. Instead, it's a book that, when you start to understand it, haunts you with puzzles and fallacies. It's one of those books that you will end up really scratching your head over, just have a look at this and try to stop yourself becoming puzzled by the narrator being puzzled:

Over the years I had puzzled out a good deal in my own mind, but in spite of that, far from becoming clearer, things now appeared to me more incomprehensible than ever. The more images I gathered from the past, I said, the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past actually happened in this or that way.

The one thing I found a little confusing is his movement between writing styles. Stendhal's section is somewhat more romanticised than the dark, grim terror of Kafka's section and then, as we go on through the book it seems like the author is trying to imitate the writing style of Proust upon his return home in the book In Search of Lost Time. Often I would say that this is too much, but it was only a little confusing - but I sometimes have to enjoy being confused in order to properly pay attention to the text.

I think it is called Vertigo because of the feeling it gives you. A kind of Stendhal Syndrome in which you feel a dizziness that is a result of the puzzles and changes in narrative that occur throughout the book - the inability to pin it down to one particular writing style.

In conclusion, I do not agree with the sentiment that this is WG Sebald's weakest novel. Instead, I would say it is probably his most difficult to read (though I have not read a lot by him) and it requires investment and some real thought to actually 'get it'. The whole extended metaphor of the feeling of vertigo is a strange one and often may not make complete sense as you are going through the book, but it is clear that WG Sebald works hard to get you more and more invested in something that will make your mind hurt and work. All in all, I thought this was a really interesting read.