All that man is

Review by New York Times Review

IN THE FINAL STORY in "All That Man Is," an aging man sits in a cafe in Italy, listening to a 7-year-old girl sing a nursery rhyme. Long retired from an illustrious career in British government, he's recovering, slowly and uncertainly, from a heart operation. As the girl rhymes her way through the months - "May, fruits and flowers," she sings, "June, off to the sea" - he ponders an inscription he's just seen in a nearby abbey: "Amemus eterna et non peritura" Let us love what is eternal and not what is transient. It's a beautiful scene, and a characteristic one in a book constantly reaching for allegory.The publisher calls "All That Man Is" a novel, but there's very little explicitly interlinking its separate narratives. The stories cohere instead through their single project: an investigation of European manhood. Each of the nine narratives features a different male protagonist hailing (by my count) from seven European countries. Each protagonist is on a journey: an English teenager traveling after graduation through Germany; a Belgian scholar driving to Poland ; a Hungarian bodyguard accompanying a prostitute and her pimp in London. Transient things are the necessary purview of the novel as a genre - the very word "novel" demands it - and Szalay's pages are full of markers of the current day: iPads, high-speed trains and GPS navigation devices. At the same time, the structure Szalay establishes for the book points to the cyclical, to the rhythmic working of time. The stories are arranged by the ages of their male protagonists, moving from 17 to 73; they also, like the little girl's song, progress through the calendar year. The first four stories concern themselves with the erotic and its complications; the fifth is preceded by an epigraph from Handel's "Orlando" - "Lascia Amor e siegui Marte," declaring a shift in allegiance from love to the god of war. Conflict, competition and mastery are at the heart of Szalay's understanding of manhood. In one of the finest stories, a Danish journalist travels to Spain to confront a vacationing government minister with evidence of an extramarital affair. He and the minister have known each other for years; they've exchanged favors; they're nearly friends. But this veneer of amiability is stripped away in the thrill of the kill. "C'est la guerre," the journalist says repeatedly in defense of his muckraking. For his part, the official insists there's no legitimate public interest in his private life; the story is "just a way for people like you to have power over people like me." Driving from the airport, the journalist passes a bullfighting arena. "All the trappings of modernity," he thinks, "and in the middle of it... slaughter as a spectator sport, as entertainment." The risk of heaviness in the symbolism, here and elsewhere, is nearly always avoided by Szalay's prose, which is frequently brilliant, remarkable for its grace and economy. He has a minimalist's gift for the quick sketch, whether of landscapes or human relationships. He studs his pages with sometimes startlingly lovely images, as when crumpled bedsheets are compared to "stiffly whipped egg white." In age, class and nationality, Szalay's protagonists are diverse, but their homogeneity in other respects undercuts the expansiveness of his title. All of his men are white, all are straight (only in the last story is a more complicated sexuality suggested); most important, all of them enjoy a more or less easy sense of ownership over a classic and now outmoded idea of Europe. Though set in the present, there's a curious absence of reference to the contemporary crises of terrorism or the upheaval caused by mass immigration. And yet these limitations may be necessary. Szalay's subject is the loss of prestige afforded a certain kind of European manhood, the spuriousness of its foundations and the ease with which it is threatened. If manhood is an arena of struggle in the midst of civilization - something like that stadium the Danish journalist drives past - the sympathy of these stories lies firmly with the bull. The novel's characteristic mood is a kind of lambent melancholy, shot through with dark, sometimes savage humor. "All That Man Is" was published in Britain in April, well before the Brexit referendum. But it has a new urgency now that the post-Cold War dream of a Europe of open borders and broad, shared identity has come under increasing question. The book's penultimate narrative features a Russian industrialist, a longtime London resident whose business empire spans the continent. From the deck of an opulent yacht, he contemplates his stratospheric rise after the fall of the U.S.S.R. and, thanks to a series of legal and financial disasters, his impending ruin. In a final touch of allegory, the yacht he can no longer afford is called Europa. Manhood is an arena of struggle, and these characters find themselves combatants. GARTH GREENWELL is the author of "What Belongs to You."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 8, 2016]

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Szalay (London and the South-East) delivers a kaleidoscopic portrayal of nine men at various stages in their lives, each in the throes of extraordinary change. Despite their diverse circumstances, they are all somehow connected, engaged in a search for relevance and-dare they even consider it-meaning. English teenagers Simon and Ferdinand arrive in Berlin with competing ideas of how best to enjoy their time abroad; Bérnard, working halfheartedly in his uncle's window shop outside Lille, France, experiences a life-altering holiday at a Cyprus beach resort; Kristian, a successful Danish tabloid editor, brings down the country's defense minister after an indiscretion; Aleksandr, a disgraced Russian oligarch, contemplates suicide; an aging diplomat considers his mortality while recuperating from a heart operation in an Italian villa and notes, in what could be the book's tagline, "How little we understand about life as it is actually happening. The moments fly past, like trackside pylons seen from a train window." Without exception, the stories-subtle, seductive, poignant, humorous-bear witness to the alienation, self-doubt, and fragmentation of contemporary life; each succeeds on its own while complementing the others. Szalay's riveting prose and his consummate command of structure illuminate the individual while exploring society's unsettling complexity. In 2013, Szalay was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. This effort exceeds even that lofty expectation. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

This collection of interconnected short stories all feature men and are linked together by a theme, aging. It begins with two teenage boys backpacking across Europe before heading to university and ends with a reluctantly introspective 73-year-old man recuperating from a car accident in Italy. Each piece focuses on a different man in a particular stage of life. They are single, married, and divorced; students, slackers, strivers, career-focused professionals, the reluctantly unemployed, and retired. -Szalay (Spring; The Innocent) does an excellent job of creating distinct and fleshed-out male protagonists and evoking various European cities in an easy and engaging style even when addressing difficult subjects. VERDICT Warning: this collection privileges believability over likability, so those who want lovable characters may be disappointed. This would be a good choice for book clubs as readers won't find well-developed female characters and can discuss the lack of female representation.-Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The third book from Szalay, one of Granta's most recent group of Best Young British Novelists, is a tightly woven, precisely observed novel in stories, nine of them, about men adrift, lonely, wandering, and wondering.The book's conceit is imaginative, its architecture impressive. The men depicted range in age from 17 (a callow, awkward university student on a budget trip through Europe with his more outgoing and lusty friend) to 73 (a retired government minister on a winter trip to his damp, mouse-infested cottage in Italy, where he's retreated not so much to lick his wounds as to catalog his infirmities as old age settles in). In between we meet a drifting young French tourist in search of sex and adventure who finds them in an unexpected form, or rather forms; a hypocritical Danish tabloid journalist chasing a scandal; a middle-aged English blowhard and expat in Croatia whose life is in epic collapse; and a Russian oligarch whose empires of metallurgy, marriage, and self-created mythology are crumbling. These men and the others (a selfish academic medievalist whose girlfriend is pregnant, a Hungarian bodyguard who's fallen in love with the jet-setting prostitute he's protecting, and a seller of high-end real estate who's chafing at his sense of being settled) resemble one another in several ways. All are sex- and/or power-obsessed, all away from home, all solitary, all in the grips of overwhelming inertia and of the philosophic realization, in some cases explicit and in some tacit, that "Life is not a joke." One may wish their circumstances were less cramped and airless, their ideas of manhood more capacious (and that women played a fuller role in their lives), but Szalay writes with subtlety and pathos about these flawed and floundering figures, none quite able to feel like the protagonist of his own life story.A grim but compelling composite portrait by a talented writer. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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He leaves the office two hours earlier than usual. Mid-afternoon, half-empty train to Gatwick. A window seat on the plane. Weak tea, and a square of chocolate with a picture of Alpine pasture on the wrapper. And then it hits him. Floating over the world, the hard earth fathoms down through shrouds of mist and vapour, the thought hits him like a missile. Wham. This is it. This is all there is. There is nothing else.      A silent explosion.      He is still staring out the window.      This is all there is.      It's not a joke. Life is not a joke. She is waiting for him at arrivals, holding up an iPad with his name on it, though she knows what he looks like from his picture on the website and approaches him, smiling, as he stands there facing the wall of drivers with their flimsy signs.      'James?' she says.      The difference in height is significant.      'You must be Paulette.'      She has a scar - is it? - on her lower lip, a pale little lump, somewhat off centre. There is a handshake. 'Welcome to Geneva,' she says.      And then, the motorway - on stilts, through tunnels. France. The low sun on one side of his face. Fresh evening light.      She says, 'So, tomorrow.'      'Yes.' He is watching something outside, something on the move in the green-gold light. Everywhere he looks, he sees money.      'I've arranged for us to meet them at the site,' she says.      'Fine. Thank you.' She is efficient, he knows that. She answers his emails promptly, with everything he needs.      He had started speaking to her in French, as he followed her out of the arrivals lounge. She had answered in English, and for a minute there was a silly situation with each of them speaking the other's language.      An immaculate, turning tunnel - a sound like holding a shell to your ear.      Then the long, late-summer dusk again.      He says, in English, 'What's the weather going to be like? Tomorrow.' It is important, will make a difference.      'Like this,' she says. 'Perfect.'      'That's nice.'      'I arranged it for you.' It sounds slightly awkward, the way she says that.      He smiles tiredly.      Stops smiling.      Shifts his feet in the footwell.      'Well,' he says, after too long a pause, 'thank you.'      The surge of the motorway is making him sleepy.      The lush glow of everything. Outside, green slopes strive skywards, rich with evening sunlight, thickly gold. Les Chalets du Midi Apartments consists of twelve brand new apartments in one of the most lovely valleys in the French Alps. There is a wide variety of 1, 2, 3 and 4 bedroom apartments available from 252,000 euros ex VAT located in a central location in the lively and popular village of Samoëns. The village of Samoëns is a charming French village with many shops, restaurants and bars . . .      How many years has he been doing this now?      They leave the motorway at Cluses, and she pays a toll.      Cluses is prosaic, a series of small roundabouts. Flower baskets hanging from street lights. Midget plane trees brutally pollarded in the French fashion. It is where she lives, she tells him. She leans forward over the wheel to look up at some window and, pointing with a lifted index finger, says, 'That's where I live.'      'Okay,' he says, pretending to be interested.      Then they have left the town and are hairpinning up the side of the valley. On the other side, mountains soak up what is left of the sunlight.      She lowers her window a little. The air smells of manure, wet grass. 'Do you know the area?' she asks.      He says he doesn't. 'Mostly we do stuff a bit further south,' he ex­plains. 'Cham. Val d'Isère.'      She nods.      'Courchevel.'      She works for the developer, Noyer.      'I cover part of Switzerland too,' he tells her.      'I see.'      The hairpins are over. The road passes through villages, under trees, through massing shadow.      'This is nice,' he says politely.      She nods again. 'Yes, it's nice, up here.'      'Very. Has Monsieur Noyer got other plans?' he asks, trying not to sound too interested. 'After this.'      'I think so. You can ask him, on Friday.' 'I will.' He wonders what Noyer is like, whether they'll get on. What Noyer will make of his proposal. He isn't even sure what his proposal will be yet. He needs to think about that.      'It's more and more popular, this area,' she says.      'I bet.'      'It's more typical,' she says, 'than the more established areas.'      'Seems like it.'      A village. They slow markedly - severe speed humps. Trees heavy with moss. Ski-hire shops - Location du ski - shuttered out of season. Signs advertising honey for sale.      'We're nearly there,' she says, accelerating as they leave the village. 'It's the next one.'      It is evening now, unambiguously. She has turned on the headlights.      There is a long straight stretch with solemn tall pines. Then the road swings left, passes over the noise of hurrying water - he sees it fraying white over stones - and they are there. 'Here we are,' she says.      A mass of signage meets them - signs for hotels, pizzerias, walking trails, ski lifts. Everyone trying to make some sort of living.      And then the deeper gloom of a modest avenue of trees.      On either side of the road, among the apartment buildings, a few old blackened barns still stand in unsold fields.      Quickly, imprecisely, seeing them through the trees, he tries to work out what they might be worth, those fields. Excerpted from All That Man Is by David Szalay All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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