A disappointment, I'm sorry to say, this final, unfinished work, published in 1954, a few months before Mann's death. The idea is fair enough - the impoverished son of a failed champagne-maker hauls himself from the lowest level of employment (unpaid lift-boy in a Paris hotel) by virtue of his good looks, educated manners, and total lack of principles. It purports to be a comic novel and there are parts that reminded me of Royal Highness (reviewed on this blog). There are genuinely comic moments - the examination for military service which Felix must at all costs fail - but the writing has the common failing of new and relatively new comic writers. It is hugely, disastrously overwritten, as if Mann is hoping that endless wordplay equates somehow to humour. On the plus side there is an excellent sex scene in Paris (something else Mann was still experimenting with as he closed in on turning eighty) and the final twist in what we must remember was only meant to be part one of the Krull confessions, is a good one.
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