Sebald writes about art and literature and memory, both personal and national. He also writes, compellingly, about the threads that run through life and thought, that occasional tantalizing feeling that nothing is quite coincidence, everything’s connected, and some things are inescapable. (His strings of associations prompt the reader to do the same: I’d been listening to Suzanne Vega, humming “Rosemary” to myself, and then I picked up this book and read an essay in which Sebald quotes Ophelia saying, “Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.” Nothing of import, but it makes me feel like I should hunt around for my copy of Hamlet.)
Also wonderful are the travel essays on Corsica, stories from a world where superstitions and ghosts linger.
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