Book Review: Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann

I had never heard of Tyll Ulenspiegel before picking up this novel but I gather that he’s a well-known German folk figure. A classic trickster type, given to bawdy jokes. Here Kehlmann brings him into the context of the Thirty Years War and humanizes him, while also telling the story of the Winter King and Queen and witch hunts of the time.

The book both is and isn’t about Tyll. We are introduced to him in the opening chapter as a travelling performer, witnessing his act as observers rather than close to Tyll’s perspective. Then we go back to his childhood, much closer to him, and learn about his family and what drove him from his village and into the life of travels. But after that, we never get close to Tyll’s perspective again. We jump through time and from place to place so that we do learn about most of Tyll’s life but later in the book it shifts quite drastically away from him and I missed the intimacy and interest of that early childhood chapter.

Tyll as a character was fascinating to me and I wanted to spend more time with him. Which isn’t to say that the sections focused on other characters weren’t interesting. They were, I just found myself confused by the switch in focus. In the end, it felt like the book didn’t quite know where it’s own heart was.