An enjoyable novel with depth. Franz is a young man of 17 when he leaves home to work with his uncle in his tobacconist shop in Vienna. He meets Sigmund Freud and a friendship grows. It is 2937 and the novel takes us through the annexation of Austria and the changes that are seen. Franz shares his dreams on the door of the shop, sellotaping a note with his dream every morning. ( )

Robert Seethaler is an Austrian novelist and actor, and I am thrilled to have read three of his impressive books: The Field, A Whole Life, and his bestselling novel, The Tobacconist. I am thoroughly taken with his understated writing style that drew me in to each of these books. In The Tobacconist, he reveals the story of a young man coming of age and simply trying to figure out his life, all while deadly prejudice and WWII begin to surround him.

As a long-time bookseller who loved to create displays, I can’t ignore the fact that the paintings on the covers of all three books are very appealing, understated in much the same way as Seethaler’s writing, and are at the same time, very unique. Displayed together these covers would draw most any browser’s eyes. Covers alone may not sell a book, but they certainly do give a book a leg up when it comes to getting a wandering customer to pick a certain book up and check it out.

With The Tobacconist, the publisher’s marketing department highlighted Franz, a young innocent boy being sent to apprentice for a tobacconist in Vienna, then meeting Sigmund Freud, introduced to love and sex by a music hall dancer, and then seeing the Nazis occupy the city and making violence and death common. All these things are described in little more than two hundred pages, but the story is told from the viewpoint of a very naïve seventeen-year-old boy from the countryside who finds himself selling tobacco, newspapers, and racy “wank” magazines in a shop during a world war. Back home the only newspapers he had ever been familiar with were cut up beside the toilet. Everything is new to him, as he’s also coming alive sexually, and he simply doesn’t have the experience to know how to judge all of these changes, as this is the only life he knows.

I loved how Seethaler writes about how this unexperienced boy learns about desire, lust, love, and the subtle beauty of a woman’s body. “But it was mainly by the hollows in the backs of her knees that he recognized her. Not all that long ago he had buried his face in those hollows, had probed them, millimeter by millimeter, with his tongue, before embarking towards higher ground. These hollows were softer than anything Franz had ever known.” Let me add, that any wise man knows that every place on a woman’s body is the sexiest.

Upon his arrival in Vienna, Franz finds just about everything overwhelming. “The city seethed like the vegetable stew on Mother’s stove.” One day, when Dr. Freud leaves his hat behind in the shop, Franz delivers it along with his newspapers and cigars to Freud’s house. Once there, he gets to know the doctor and both his wife Martha and daughter Anna. When Franz becomes infatuated and involved with a young woman, Anezka, who he learns is a music hall dancer/stripper, he gets dating advice from none other than Dr. Sigmund Freud, as well as having his active libido explained to him.

There are distant rumblings about Hitler’s rise throughout the book. The storefront is tagged in pig’s blood that read, GET OUT JEWLOVER! The eventual Nazi occupation of Vienna brings about the persecution, street beating, and eventual death of the boy’s boss and the owner of the tobacco shop, Otto Trsnyek. The young boy is coming of age in a world that is brutal in inconceivable ways. Even when the story turns dark, Seethaler keeps some whimsy in his writing. The author doesn’t have to create the horror, we are all too familiar with the story, but he does an excellent job of describing how an innocent mind tries to comprehend this changing world. After Otto’s brutal beating and arrest, the boy is informed by authorities that he is to operate the shop, as the owner has died in Gestapo custody.

In a most telling scene, Franz witnesses a Bolshevist hanging a large banner from a rooftop, and when he is cornered by Hitler’s followers, he chooses to “escape” by leaping to his death from the roof’s edge. Over the next few days, Franz reads in the very biased newspapers about the “dangerous and subversive” banner, never revealing what it actually said: FREEDOM OF THE PEOPLE REQUIRES FREEDOM OF THE HEART. LONG LIVE FREEDOM! LONG LIVE OUR PEOPLE! LONG LIVE AUSTRIA!

One day in 1938, the postman tells Franz that after living in Vienna for eighty years, Dr. Freud is leaving the country over concerns for his safety. Seeing the guards stationed around Freud’s house, Franz sneaks in through a coal chute to say goodbye to his friend. Franz also learns about the Reich Flight Tax that took one third of a family’s fortune upon their departure.

Over time, Franz learns how to manage the tobacco shop and to keep the Nazis off his case for some time. At the same time, he’s compelled to write short messages on slips of paper that he posts daily on the storefront. The book ends when several years later, Anezka visits the then abandon tobacco shop, and sees the remaining half of one of Franz’s slips still taped beside the door, she quickly takes it and hurries away as she hears the Allied bombers coming overhead. I am so glad to have discovered such a writer. ( )

This book tells the story of a youth from the provinces sent to Vienna to become apprentice to a news agent (Trafik is Viennese colloquialism for a small newsstand/tobacco shop). He learns his trade from the agent, a one-legged war veteran with fond memories of the youth's mother, and gets acquainted with some of the regular customers, becoming particularly fascinated with one, Sigmund Freud. An unlikely friendship begins, and soon an unlikely love story with an elusive Bohemian dancer who slips in and out of the youth's life. Franz, the apprentice, appeals to the professor; certainly a world famous psychiatrist can help him understand love. Well, you know where this is heading; of course Freud finds this topic mystifying as well. All this would be a charming little story, except that Franz arrives in Vienna in the summer of 1937. Over the next twelve months, the city around them turns on its head with little regard for the cares of an apprentice or a renowned professor.
The book is meticulously written, with phrases and descriptions that stay with the reader. Seethaler manages to balance the serious nature of the times he describes with a light touch. There are passages that had me laughing out loud. It was worth learning German to enjoy this novel. Highly recommended. ( )

I generally ignore bestsellers, but THE TOBACCONIST is an "international" bestseller, and Robert Seethaler has made quite a splash as a writer to watch. This book was published in German several years ago, and the English translation is about four years old now. I've read the Canadian edition.

It's a little book, barely 200 pages, but it has both sweetness and depth, a rare combination. The sweetness is in young Austrian bumpkin Franz's coming of age, as he is tormented by his first 'love' and sexual awakening, under the able tutelage of Anezka, a voluptuous Bohemian tart with an endearing space between her teeth. (I thought of a very young Jim Harrison and his enduring crush on model-actress Lauren Hutton.) The depth lies in its setting, 1937'-38 Vienna, as the Nazis and the Gestapo begin to move in and establish themselves without a single shot fired. That and Franz's unlikely friendship with the aged Dr Sigmund Freud, who attempts to counsel the boy about women and love.

"I suspect that when we talk about your love, what we really mean is your libido ... This is the force that drives people after a certain age. It causes as much joy as it does pain, and to put it in simple terms, with men, it is located in their trousers."

Bingo! Franz gets this much. But at the same time, Freud also opines on current affairs, not so easy to understand.

"Current world events are nothing but a tumour, an ulcer, a suppurating, stinking bubo that will soon burst and spill its disgusting contents over the whole of western civilization."

Of course he is referring to the fascism, hate and wave of anti-Semitism that was beginning to consume Europe, but it also seems pretty relevant to today's situation, no? Funny how really good books are always relevant. That relevance carries over in Seethaler's depiction of the "Brown shirts" with swastika armbands who begin to fill the town -

"They also had a strange light in their eyes. The light was sort of optimistic or hopeful or inspired, but essentially also dim-witted ..."

As events unfold, the story becomes much darker. The shop front is defaced with pig's blood, and Franz's crippled boss is beaten and arrested by the Gestapo for selling to Jews, leaving Franz, formerly the apprentice, now the tobacconist. Dr Freud, under surveillance himself, is unable to help Franz, who is forced to do some growing up fast, and fashions his own form of revenge.

Franz's maturation over the course of this hard year is further reflected in the correspondence between him and his widowed mother, cards and Ietters at first simple and comical, and then increasingly complex and moving, as the eighteen year-old tried to make sense of it all.

History is made personal here. The phrase "what goes around comes around" kept cropping up in my mind as I read of Franz and Dr Freud. It's that inescapable relevance to today's headlines. And the writing here is simply beautiful, by the way. Seethaler deserves his success. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

Thrown into Vienna as an apprentice of a tobacconist and facing uncertain times, Frank tries to make sense of the world and what he should do. Along the way, he fell in love so terribly that he lost interest in his job. He sought the counsel of Sigmund Freund, forming an unlikely friendship with him. When Otto died, he could have gone back home. But he didn't (the thought would surely have crossed his mind though it wasn't mentioned in the book). Nobody would say he is a failure. However, he chose to continue the tobacco shop. He even mocked the Hitlerites by flying Otto's pants as a flag in front of a state institution, although surely he should know that this would lead to his death. His courage to do the right thing or stand for what he believes in is something that we can all emulate. ( )