Thomas Glavinic

This novel, pretentious and uninteresting, posits that a Viennese man wakes on the fourth of July, presumably a day of no particular significance in Austria, to find the city, indeed all of central Europe, uninhabited. This premise, perhaps fresh seventy-five years ago, has been worked to death in many a book and film, and this author does very little with it. Our protagonist sets up video cameras everywhere and watches and rewatches them endlessly. He steals the things he needs to survive. show more He drives around the empty streets. And that's about it. There are a few moments of interest--somebody who is a poor communicator telephones him occasionally and either the author or our hero pauses to reflect on the nature of society and what makes it function, but that's poor recompense for a book which will take most weeks to read. If some readers persevered long enough to find that something finally happened on page 313, so be it. show less

A fascinating and very sad novel about Jonas, who wakes up and finds that he is the only living person or animal in Vienna. There is no internet, no bird song, no one is answering a telephone anywhere. He searches and sets up cameras looking for signs of people.
I was gripped by this book; although in many ways it is slow moving and considered, it also had a fast movement to it too. Glavinic manages to do this with detailed observations and then fast speed. Unexplained things start to happen show more and I was hooked, wanting to know what these things were all about.
The novel is well written and although told with some distance, in the third person and with little writing about how he is feeling emotionally, Glavinic allows the reader to connect with this lonely man by telling us of his actions, rather than his thoughts. The seemingly irrationality of some of these actions, make you start to wonder how you would react, what would it be like. I don't think I will forget this novel in a hurry. show less

An excellent novel written as a statement by an unnamed man whose partner is mostly referred to as 'my partner', although we have her name, Sonja, at the beginning. The account begins on Good Friday and is set in Austria near Graz. After a night in an inn meeting a group of friends they move on to stay with a couple, Heinrich and Eva who live in a remote house with the only neighbours an elderly farmer and his wife and a multitude of feral cats. The statement is written with lots of detail show more about what they ate and drank and the activities they engaged in; badminton, table tennis, rummy and walking are just a few of these. On the evening of Good Friday they watched the news and heard about a horrific and cruel murder of two children nearby. Heinrich becomes obsessed with following the news of these murders and when he hears that the killer filmed the incidents and that this will be shown on German TV that evening he is keen to watch. Sonja and Eva are less keen to do this and the rights and wrongs of showing this film are discussed and the local demonstrations the airing create are also talked about. Heinrich and the narrator stay up to watch the coverage. The weekend unfold, always dominated by the 24-hour news coverage of the murders and talk of the murders. It is all that anyone talks about when they go to a pub for lunch, talk to the neighbours and so on. Thomas Glavinic has constructed an excellent novel that is compelling and horrific but feels plausible. show less

Lo que me llamó la atención al adquirir este libro fue su argumento: el que un buen día el protagonista se da cuenta de que es el único ser vivo sobre la tierra. No hay más personas. No hay animales de ningún tipo. Las comunicaciones se han cortado. Jonas, el protagonista, está solo. No hay nadie más. Jonas no sabe qué ha ocurrido, si la gente ha muerto o está viva, y si está viva dónde se encuentra, cómo ha desaparecido. De esta manera, asistimos al periplo de Jonas en su show more infructuosa búsqueda de más personas. Jonas recorre las calles de Viena, se introduce en las viviendas de familiares y conocidos, en su desesperado intento por encontrar a alguien más. Jonas llega a convertirse en una especie de Robinson Crusoe moderno, cuya isla es el mundo entero. Creyendo que alguien le acecha, Jonas empieza a colocar cámaras en diversos puntos de la ciudad, y termina incluso por grabarse a sí mismo mientras duerme, en su afán de atrapar esa presencia. Poco a poco, asistimos a la caída en el abismo de la castigada mente de Jonas.

’Algo más oscuro que la noche’, del austriaco Thomas Glavinic, es una reflexión, un retrato de la desintegración de la mente humana enfrentada a sus miedos más atávicos. ¿Es posible vivir siendo el único ser humano sobre la faz de la tierra? ¿Cómo aceptar y sobrellevar tal situación? Esta novela no narra una historia postapocalíptica de sorpresas y acción, como pueda ser ‘Soy leyenda’, de Richard Matheson. Excepto algunos flashbacks en los que el protagonista recuerda algunos momentos de su pasado vividos junto a su novia y amigos, esta novela es el viaje interior de Jonas en su manera de actuar y pensar.

El primer tercio de la novela es prometedora y engancha. Pero los otros dos tercios son excesivamente monótonos, son una repetición de situaciones donde Jonas lo único que hace es explorar calles y viviendas, y la verdad es que aburre. Thomas Glavinic da a su novela un tono sobrio y contenido, escribe bien. Pero la historia no se sostiene y se cae por su propio peso. Excesivas páginas para una novela interesante, pero nada más. show less