The Glass Room

De: Simon Mawer

Narrado por: Jefferson Mays

Duración: 14 h y 52 m

Resumen del Editor

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room brilliantly evokes six decades of Eastern European history, beginning in 1930s Czechoslovakia. Jewish newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer build their dream home, and despite the low hum of the German war machine reverberating through the land, the two look forward to a life of promise. But as war becomes inevitable, their lives are transformed in profound ways.

©2009 Simon Mawer (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

Reseñas de la Crítica

"[ The Glass Room is] a thing of extraordinary beauty and symmetry... a novel of ideas, yet strongly propelled by plot and characterised by an almost dreamlike simplicity of telling. Comparisons with the work of Michael Frayn would not be misplaced, and there are occasional moments of illuminating brilliance." ( The Guardian, UK)

Not a war story.

I thought this story would be focused on the impact the war had on people but this story was more about the flings that happened between the various men and women that lived in or worked in the glass room. The author pulls you into the story by intricately describing thoughts, emotions, and scenes with flourishing vocabulary. By the last third of the book I found myself listening at more than 1x speed to get through some of the tedium.

There are some parts of the book that had me rewinding and copying a quote to my Facebook status because it was such a noteworthy phrase, like: "When they had first met she was a girl becoming a woman, now she is a woman become a mother. The fulcrum of her life has shifted."

A cold story

What did you like best about The Glass Room? What did you like least?

I liked visualizing what the Landauer's house would have looked like. But the characters were cold and not likeable. I found the quality of the relationships distant and aloof, and had trouble relating to anyone in the book. It was gratifying at the end when a reunion took place that I will not reveal so as not to ruin it for readers.

Would you be willing to try another book from Simon Mawer? Why or why not?

Not sure. I didn't like the overall feel of this book.

What three words best describe Jefferson Mays’s voice?

deadpan.

Did The Glass Room inspire you to do anything?

I can't say this book inspired me to do anything.

Any additional comments?

This was not my favourite book. I kept reading because I wanted to know what would happen, but I would not recommend the book.

An ode to a modernist monument.

The Glass Room
As the author notes at the end, all but one character are fictional. Yet, the house is not. It’s Mies van der Rohe’s Tugenhat house in Brno, Czech Republic (1929). So this novel is actually historical fiction. Everything about the House is intricately detailed - its construction, materials, setting, and even the first owners (the industrialist owners are mirrored in Landauer family), while the life dramas of the characters are intricately woven into the fabric and reflections of the “glass room.” The narrative also follows the Tugenhat House’s wartime and postwar change of occupants, uses, and private to public ownership. If glass could be woven into a delicate fabric, you would have before you the many refractions that the glass room generated in the characters’ lives— their loves, secrets, daily rituals and chores, and fetes. The fabric would be as brillant and scintillating as the actual room. This new “room/raum” is also the fabric that Mawer has woven into the poetic prose of this novel.

Brilliant

If you could sum up The Glass Room in three words, what would they be?

Clever plot sequencing

Who was your favorite character and why?

The room itself- it contained the whole story

What does Jefferson Mays bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Reader brought the story to life.

Any additional comments?

The author has an exceptional grasp on the human condition.

Beauty and Grace

Listening to this story was like eating a delicious dessert after every meal.
The narration is exemplary.