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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
This book is the first on Rebecca Makkai’s Around the World in 84 Books challenge. It’s translated from Hungarian and I never would have found this on my own. Engrossing and transporting
Ostensibly a two-hander about a writer and the woman who deals with her domestic chores, but really it's a meditation about relationships and what we owe to the people in our lives, and how we can irrevocably harm others by giving them what we think they need and not what they actually do and delicate thread of decency that we must spin by allowing ourselves to love other people.
This was a captivating read about the relationship between a writer and her hired help. Their relationship was strange, as are the characters, and I could never really understand their connection. The writer narrates the story and the unfolding life of Emerence. It was suspenseful and unpredictable and oftentimes brutal. Be forewarned that there is animal abuse.
I've been having a lot of trouble writing reviews. It's mostly mental---the getting started feels like an insurmountable obstacle, but once I start typing, I can depend on the usual dribble of letters falling all over the place and assembling themselves into something semi-intelligible. But what I don't get is why I feel compelled to write the review (like I'm somehow cheating or getting away with something by not doing so). This is asinine. [Thanks for sitting through my solo therapy session masquerading as a review intro!]
I finished this book almost a month ago and I'm still thinking about it (always a sign of a great read for me personally). I'm not sure I can remember a character quite like Emerence getting under my skin and in my head so completely. Picture this: You hire a housekeeper. Immediately, she comes and goes as she pleases, sets all the terms, chooses your meals, redecorates your house, hijacks your dog... This has got to be one of the most complicated "friendships" between two characters put into novel form. Essentially, the book serves as a confessional for the narrator who in telling Emerence's story, in part, relieves her own guilt over playing a role in Emerence's demise.
Szabó's narrative allows us little glimpses of Emerence and her past. As we readers put the puzzle pieces together almost every assumption and mystery about the character is undone, yet she remains almost mythological due to her sheer will power and strong personality.
Despite some pretty heavy subject matter (WWII, death, changing eras, betrayal, family ruptures, past meeting present, etc.) the book also manages to be rather funny. This was my first time reading Szabó but certainly won't be my last.
I finished this book almost a month ago and I'm still thinking about it (always a sign of a great read for me personally). I'm not sure I can remember a character quite like Emerence getting under my skin and in my head so completely. Picture this: You hire a housekeeper. Immediately, she comes and goes as she pleases, sets all the terms, chooses your meals, redecorates your house, hijacks your dog... This has got to be one of the most complicated "friendships" between two characters put into novel form. Essentially, the book serves as a confessional for the narrator who in telling Emerence's story, in part, relieves her own guilt over playing a role in Emerence's demise.
Szabó's narrative allows us little glimpses of Emerence and her past. As we readers put the puzzle pieces together almost every assumption and mystery about the character is undone, yet she remains almost mythological due to her sheer will power and strong personality.
Despite some pretty heavy subject matter (WWII, death, changing eras, betrayal, family ruptures, past meeting present, etc.) the book also manages to be rather funny. This was my first time reading Szabó but certainly won't be my last.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
“One can tell instinctively what sort of flower a person would be if born a plant.”
I loved this plainspoken eloquent and devastating novel by Hungarian great, Magda Szabó (translated by Len Rix). The Door is the story of Emerence, a character of epic almost mythological strength, eccentricity, and purity. She’s an older woman who is a housekeeper for several families in Budapest, or maybe a town on its environs. Her ever more complex and tragic history is revealed slowly over the course of the novel by one of her employers, a writer, who she befriends, as much as anyone with Emerence’s Asberger’s like characteristics, can: intensely and brutally honestly. Or in the narrator’s words: “She was fearless, enchantingly and wickedly clever, brazenly impudent.”
One of the most interesting and frustrating parts of the novel is how awful the narrator is. This writer, a woman on the verge of literary stardom, is so utterly selfish and self absorbed, so unthinking and unkind, and in such ordinary believable ways, it made me want to scream. The unfolding of the events was like watching a train wreck, and you already know the end, because that’s where the book starts: “I killed Emerence. The fact that I was trying to save her rather than destroy her changes nothing.”
Because the narrator is a writer, she is also capable of great discernment, subtle and piercing awareness, gorgeous language. There are lines and passages harkening back to ancient Greek and Roman texts and characters. There is a keen and lovely sense of landscape and weather and geography. And the characters - the novel’s great gift - seem drawn straight from fairytales, weird and wonderful and larger than life.
“The two lions on the gate of Mycenae stirred; each grew a living eye, one green, one blue, and they began quietly to miaow.”
But when it comes to how the writer should and could treat Emerence, a woman who has become a part of her family, she fails, again and again, and it’s horrible to watch. My sister had to stop reading the book she hated the narrator so much. I did the opposite - I was so enrapt by Emerence, I couldn’t stop reading. And I was also fascinated by how Szabó is able to create a character no doubt like herself but with such disagreeable yet real qualities. It’s a considerable and rare achievement.
The parts about writing as a profession are deeply thoughtful. For example, what the narrator says about creativity requiring a state of grace: “So many things are required for it to succeed — stimulus and composure, inner peace and a kind of bitter-sweet excitement.” Or when things don’t go well: “stunted embryos of meaningless sentences emerging under my exasperated fingers.”
Because the hero and victim of this tragedy is Emerence, and the one who is ‘stupid, and full of envy” is the one who survives and gets to tell the story, I can only hope that the narrator’s last thought is true: “The dead always win. Only the living lose.”
I loved this plainspoken eloquent and devastating novel by Hungarian great, Magda Szabó (translated by Len Rix). The Door is the story of Emerence, a character of epic almost mythological strength, eccentricity, and purity. She’s an older woman who is a housekeeper for several families in Budapest, or maybe a town on its environs. Her ever more complex and tragic history is revealed slowly over the course of the novel by one of her employers, a writer, who she befriends, as much as anyone with Emerence’s Asberger’s like characteristics, can: intensely and brutally honestly. Or in the narrator’s words: “She was fearless, enchantingly and wickedly clever, brazenly impudent.”
One of the most interesting and frustrating parts of the novel is how awful the narrator is. This writer, a woman on the verge of literary stardom, is so utterly selfish and self absorbed, so unthinking and unkind, and in such ordinary believable ways, it made me want to scream. The unfolding of the events was like watching a train wreck, and you already know the end, because that’s where the book starts: “I killed Emerence. The fact that I was trying to save her rather than destroy her changes nothing.”
Because the narrator is a writer, she is also capable of great discernment, subtle and piercing awareness, gorgeous language. There are lines and passages harkening back to ancient Greek and Roman texts and characters. There is a keen and lovely sense of landscape and weather and geography. And the characters - the novel’s great gift - seem drawn straight from fairytales, weird and wonderful and larger than life.
“The two lions on the gate of Mycenae stirred; each grew a living eye, one green, one blue, and they began quietly to miaow.”
But when it comes to how the writer should and could treat Emerence, a woman who has become a part of her family, she fails, again and again, and it’s horrible to watch. My sister had to stop reading the book she hated the narrator so much. I did the opposite - I was so enrapt by Emerence, I couldn’t stop reading. And I was also fascinated by how Szabó is able to create a character no doubt like herself but with such disagreeable yet real qualities. It’s a considerable and rare achievement.
The parts about writing as a profession are deeply thoughtful. For example, what the narrator says about creativity requiring a state of grace: “So many things are required for it to succeed — stimulus and composure, inner peace and a kind of bitter-sweet excitement.” Or when things don’t go well: “stunted embryos of meaningless sentences emerging under my exasperated fingers.”
Because the hero and victim of this tragedy is Emerence, and the one who is ‘stupid, and full of envy” is the one who survives and gets to tell the story, I can only hope that the narrator’s last thought is true: “The dead always win. Only the living lose.”
This is what a character study should be!!
The story is set in the post WW2 Era in Budapest Hungary. The time period doesn't really matter because not much attention is paid to the historical background. IT IS A TOTAL FOCUS on the two main characters (Magda and Emmeres). The story is narrated from Magda's point of view. She is a writer and E is the housekeeper. They have a very interesting relationship whereby the normal hierarchy of house-owner vs house-keep isn't respected.
E is a very eccentric person. She has a very unique past which dictates her distrust towards religion, politics and the class systems. She has her own set of governing principles which are unshakeable. No amount of proof or logical reasoning can make her see reason. In numerous points, Magda points out that if only she let's go of these beliefs she could be in a very important position in society. This brings me to another theme it discusses which is the fact that E believes that anyone who does not work using their hands are not doing any real work. Magda who is a writer disagrees. It is a very common theme in the first part of the book where E doesn't respect M cause she is not doing actual work.
As the book progresses we slowly learn about the reasoning behind the eccentricities of Magda. It is important to understand that the narration is from Magda's POV. So we do have a sort of unreliable narrator vibe to the story. None of the characters are likeable. Both of them lash out, are unpredictable but in their own weirdness they actually have a lot of affection for each other.
There is a sense of sadness and an impending doom to the narrative because of a revelation made in the first chapter itself. We know something bad is coming, we know what it is but we don't know how. Another point of suspense is the secrecy behind E's house. What is behind that door that no one is allowed to enter. While they don't seem to be major plot drivers it was enough to keep me occupied.
The writing was beautiful. I have vivid images of scenes from the story that I know will stick with me for a while.
The story is set in the post WW2 Era in Budapest Hungary. The time period doesn't really matter because not much attention is paid to the historical background. IT IS A TOTAL FOCUS on the two main characters (Magda and Emmeres). The story is narrated from Magda's point of view. She is a writer and E is the housekeeper. They have a very interesting relationship whereby the normal hierarchy of house-owner vs house-keep isn't respected.
E is a very eccentric person. She has a very unique past which dictates her distrust towards religion, politics and the class systems. She has her own set of governing principles which are unshakeable. No amount of proof or logical reasoning can make her see reason. In numerous points, Magda points out that if only she let's go of these beliefs she could be in a very important position in society. This brings me to another theme it discusses which is the fact that E believes that anyone who does not work using their hands are not doing any real work. Magda who is a writer disagrees. It is a very common theme in the first part of the book where E doesn't respect M cause she is not doing actual work.
As the book progresses we slowly learn about the reasoning behind the eccentricities of Magda. It is important to understand that the narration is from Magda's POV. So we do have a sort of unreliable narrator vibe to the story. None of the characters are likeable. Both of them lash out, are unpredictable but in their own weirdness they actually have a lot of affection for each other.
There is a sense of sadness and an impending doom to the narrative because of a revelation made in the first chapter itself. We know something bad is coming, we know what it is but we don't know how. Another point of suspense is the secrecy behind E's house. What is behind that door that no one is allowed to enter. While they don't seem to be major plot drivers it was enough to keep me occupied.
The writing was beautiful. I have vivid images of scenes from the story that I know will stick with me for a while.
Although it was quite short, I had to struggle to finish this book. Both heroines were annoying in a different way, the book was a bit repetitive, and the pleasant writing style of the author wasn't quite enough for me. I mostly enjoyed reading it, but it was not up to my elevated expectations (which, as I have repeatedly concluded, are not to my advantage - expect less, never get disappointed). 3,5 stars.
Not really sure what to say about this book. Wonderful writing that kept me on my toes. What it is about? For me, it's a book about paying attention to people. I love the ending! Throughout, Emerence seems so unique, but Sutu is described as very complex and interesting herself. We just weren't paying attention to her. Thus, this book left me thinking all people are unique and worthy.