Review: Tyll

Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I get the impression that this book was a lot of fun to write. The author obviously knows a lot about the history of this time period, at least as pertains to this novel, and spent some time tying together all the various threads. Unfortunately, at least for me, this didn't make that good of a story when tied together. As a story about Eugenspiegel, the back story seemed much too extensive, and the various threads traversing time and space at times took a while to tie together, which made it a bit awkward for me.

Probably this was most interesting taken in snippets, since some of the scenarios and dialog were excellent. Not least among these were the different narratives of the same story by different people, showing how even recent history can be distorted a great deal.

The denouement at the end didn't really work that well for me, although I did enjoy how Liz the queen handled herself in what seemed like a lost cause.

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