Reading 1001 discussion

Reviews go here for Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann. (Quarterly Read, 2021).

As the subheading clearly states, right from the beginning the reader is aware that the robust and affluent Buddenbrook family is going to decline so the focus of the novel is how exactly the characters in the book contribute to this decline.
The novel opens and ends with Tony the daughter of Old Johnann Buddenbrook, the son of the founder of the family firm. It is her life that bookends the story as we end with her being nearly the only survivor some 40 odd years later. Old Johann Buddenbrook is a dedicated worker with great business acumen who has brought increased prosperity to the import/export firm and is also the consulate to the Netherlands. Over the course of the book we watch as his sons and his daughter contribute slowly and completely to the destruction of the firm's and the family's prosperity. The richness of the book is in how Mann writes about this family with a certain detachment and a slightly ironic view but with great personal insight. Evidently Mann grew up in a family not unlike the Buddenbrooks. He makes fun of the Buddenbrooks but never too severely, he punishes them but never in a way that is contrived by the needs of the plot, rather one always sees the characters as the center of focus and the reader's sympathies stay engaged even as the characters make horrible decisions. The family has some triumphs and some wonderful moments of success, as when Thomas become a senator. Yet, slowly Thomas's lack of self confidence betrays him. His brother, Christian, is betrayed by his own mental weakness. The family manipulates Tony into disastrous marriage decisions and the next generation is artistically strong but physically and practically too weak to carry the business burden. Overall, the lack of belief in themselves, a weakening business acumen, a bit of questionable ethics demonstrate to the reader that the business of business is fraught with pitfalls that include leaning to odd religiosity, taking risks that are not called for and ultimately out and out disease.
A wonderful 5 star book for me.

Quarterly read 2021. This book by Thomas Mann, is his debut, written in his twenties, and won him the Nobel Prized. The story is somewhat based on his own family and his own home town. It follows a family through generations as the family, the home and the business all decline. I believe I also will give it 5 stars.

Also read for quarterly 2021. In general, liked this book better than I thought I would. ‘Decline of a Hamburg merchant family legacy’ does admittedly sounds like it could be a bit of a massive doldrum of a book. But, I found myself pretty engaged with the family’s exploits and failures and the way the book explored the follies and impossible dreams of the mercantile class. I gave it 4 stars.

I recommend listening to the Audible version of this tome, read by David Rintoul, who renders Mann perfectly. As the title suggests, this is a family saga, set in the nineteenth century, about the rise and decline of a merchant family in Lubeck. It concentrates on the third generation of the family, the heyday having been when the second generation was in charge. Mann describes dinner parties, christenings, Christmas celebrations, holidays at the beach and the politics of the Senate in exquisite detail. My favourite piece, however, was the description of a day in the life of the schoolboy Hanno, aged fifteen. One becomes immersed in the lives of the family and their milieu.

I also recommend the audio version, narrated by David Rintoul, he takes this detailed and in-depth family saga and makes it a manageable and entertaining read.

I don't begrudge the time spent on this novel and I take away from it a very detailed view of the life of a 19th-century German merchant family, but this novel lacked my emotional engagement. At times you are privy to some very entertaining little dramas but I didn't find myself reacting very much to the family successes or failures. It was only towards the end when we get some parts narrated from little Hanno's perspective that I felt fully invested in what would happen next. So for me I can only give it 4 stars.

Rating: 4 stars

I enjoyed this and feel it is a remarkable debut novel. It was better than I anticipated.

Quarterly read 2021. Still mesmerized by Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks is my second book of Mann after Death in Venice and Other Stories. I've noticed a lot of autobiographical references from Mann's short stories and novellas, particularly from Tonio Kröger and Death in Venice in my previous reading, and they seem to similarly explore the theme of the imminent decay of bourgeois family after a certain period has passed with the latest generation of the family usually exhibit artistic tendencies. But overall, Buddenbrooks is on a whole other level with the details of the family saga, something that seems incomprehensible to me to be published by the time Mann was only twenty-six years old.

Quarterly read 2021 (read late)
4 Stars

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to and I put that down to reading it alongside The Magician by Colm Toibin a fictional look at the life of Mann and his fiction which provided a great deal of insight into Mann what he wrote and how he wrote and especially about his family.

For a debut novel published when the author was in his 20s this is an outstanding piece of work. A real family saga that moves through the generations as the reader sees how simple bad decisions and bad luck can lead to the downfall of an entire family.