“Seethaler’s books are coloured by mood, not ideas; they would never go as far as articulating a worldview. But there is a sense in The Café with No Name—as with his other novels—of a world whose cogs are whirring too quickly, disrupting the ordinary rhythms of human life... What is it then that Seethaler’s novels are trying to say? The answer is perhaps his prose itself: simple and restrained, it asks nothing of its reader except the bond of time. He encourages us to slow down and look around, before it’s all over... Seethaler’s literary preoccupations [can be placed] alongside writers such as Claire Keegan, John Berger or John Williams… Modest ambitions, when precisely executed, make lasting impressions…and his latest fable-like miniature invites quiet wonder into the ordinary.”
Read the full review in the Financial Times.
