SOURCE: Byatt, A. S. “Only Connect.” New Statesman 130, no. 4559 (15 October 2001): 52-3.

In the following review, Byatt offers a positive assessment of Austerlitz, but notes that its internal coincidences and interconnections seem more “overtly constructed” than in Sebald's previous works.

W G Sebald's narratives are both old and new, in form and subject matter. They are characteristically modern in that they attempt, more and more desperately and elaborately, to make sense of a world that is always elusive. His isolated narrators move through a world with none of the ancient structures of thought and feeling—no myth, no pattern of belief—trying to make sense, and also afraid of making sense.

They move through both time and space, making endless connections. In time, they explore the structures of memory, private and public. There are digressions on national, local and individual history. People burrow through archives or examine diaries. Sebald...