SOURCE: Dirda, Michael. Review of Vertigo, by W. G. Sebald. Washington Post Book World (25 June 2000): 15.

In the following review, Dirda notes the critical acclaim Sebald has gathered, but finds Vertigo tenuously constructed and confusing for readers who do not enjoy Sebald's pessimistic European sensibility.

Children's literature, it has been rashly said (by me), can be divided into two subgenres: the books that kids like (Animorphs, the American Girl series) and those that grown-ups like (various Newbery and Caldecott winners). As it happens, one can make a comparable judgment about adult fiction. There are novels that readers love, and there are texts, fictions, experiments that critics rave about.

Vertigo falls into this latter category. I enjoyed it and admired it immensely, but then my suspect taste for all kinds of narrative, from the most popular to the most innovative, could easily give the word catholic a bad name. W...