Trouble Viennese atmosphere

Being brutally projected the tranquility of the shores of a lake in Upper Austria in eruptive atmosphere of Vienna in the summer of 1937, reason enough to shake a boy of 17. The Tresniek Tobacco is the portrait of a city that is about to give an arrogant mustache, through the eyes of an innocent who discovers jumbled love, sorrow, nostalgia, politics, betrayal, racism and rebellion. Robert Seethaler is particularly inspired to describe the zeitgeist of the time: the Viennese lightness disintegrates against the rise of intolerance and hatred. The book is nevertheless frustrating in a narrative that explores various ways without deepening his subjects: the budding friendship with an old client named Sigmund Freud sketched and remains rather unlikely, the character Tresniek, the one-legged tobacconist, and the mother of the missing hero also flesh and lovers torment the young man take a sometimes exaggerated importance. The balance of the book is threatened by these themes are hitting each other and are difficult to marry. We rightly retort that they only match the foggy state of mind and destabilized a teenager who learns his human life in an atmosphere vitiated miles away from the carefree existence he knew until then. Bildungsroman in a troubled time, Tresniek Tobacco leaves mixed feelings while remaining a generally enjoyable read that makes you want to return one day to this Austrian author.