Tag: Budapest

Review 2598: A Place to Stand

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The first novel I read by Ann Bridge was contemplative. This one becomes much more action oriented. But both are about women developing new conceptions of themselves. This one is about a young woman becoming an adult.

A Place to Stand was published in 1951, but it is set ten years earlier. Hope Kirkland is a little bit spoiled, a nineteen-year-old American whose wealthy father is an oil executive living in Budapest for the last eight years. Although she and her mother have lived there that long, neither of them seems to understand much about what’s going on around them politically.

Hope is engaged to Sam Harrison, a young journalist who has just been transferred to Istanbul. At his departure, he gives Hope a large box of chocolates, which she thinks is an odd goodbye gift. However, when she opens it, she finds it contains two passports for young men and money with a note of where to take them. So, she does. In a less desirable neighborhood, she finds a group of Polish refugees, an old woman, her two sons Jurek and Stefan, and Jurek’s fiancée Litka.

Hungary is neutral, but Poland is fighting the Nazis. Some Hungarian politicians are pushing the country toward Germany, so Polish refugees are in potential danger. Stefan and Jurek are almost ready to leave the country, but they are waiting for something to arrive from Poland first.

Hope is immediately drawn into the affairs of the Polish group. She is struck by what was clearly once a wealthy family having no home and no possessions. Then the Nazis arrive in Budapest and immediately begin looking for Poles. At the same time, the Americans are asked to leave the country.

I had to get over my initial reaction to Hope and her general obliviousness, which was made worse for me by Bridge’s continual use of the word “little” to describe just about everything about her, her little hand, her little figure, etc. However, this novel turns into an adventure that results in self-discovery for her. I enjoyed it quite a bit, acknowledging that probably many rich American girls at the time were silly and clueless (although ones living right there in Budapest? I’m not so sure).

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Review 2305: The Fawn

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The Fawn is an unusual novel, narrated as it is by Eszter, who through the entire novel is speaking to another person. Eventually, we understand this is her lover, whose identity is not confirmed until the last half of the book.

The novel moves among scenes from the present and the past, sometimes with no transition, so that I was briefly confused about the when. Eszter grows up very poor. Her parents are from more prosperous roots, her father’s perhaps aristocratic, but his family has thrown them off. Her father is a lawyer but he takes few cases. He is more interested in horticulture and in fact is ailing for most of her life. So, her mother teaches endless piano lessons to support them, and Eszter earns money by tutoring other students and sometimes by stealing. Her life is made harder by her parents’ sufficiency for each other. She feels that they pay no attention to her.

Although Eszter becomes a famous actress with a good income and a nice flat in Budapest, she never forgets or forgives the slights of her childhood. In particular, she hates Angéla, a schoolmate who is beautiful and kind, but whose way is made easy by everyone because she is rich and beautiful. Her bad grades are corrected by the school after visits from her parents. Eszter is happy to see her family leave town after it is disgraced, but Angéla re-emerges after the war, married to the man who becomes Eszter’s lover.

Eszter is a complex character, not likable but someone who still keeps our sympathy. This novel explores the complexity of human relationships. Eszter laments that no one has ever loved her for herself, but she has turned herself into a chameleon—a famous actress who so submerges herself in her roles that on the street no one recognizes her. The Party members refuse to believe her true story when she submits her CV for approval to work at the theater, so she has to reinvent her life to make herself into a reformed aristocrat. Her lover loves her but doesn’t understand her at all.

I found this novel a little difficult at first because it just seemed to be rambling, but the narrative is compelling. Once I really got going, I just wanted to see how it ended.

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Review 2173: Iza’s Ballad

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When Ettie Szȍcs’s husband Vince dies, she is terrified of being left alone in her house in the small town where they’ve lived for many years. So, she is relieved when her daughter Iza tells her Ettie will come to live with her in Pest, in her modern apartment. Iza has always been the light of her and Vince’s lives, a proud defender of her father as a child after he was dismissed from his position as a judge for political reasons, an excellent student who worked against the Nazis during the war, now a respected doctor, a post-Stalinist modern woman. Ettie also has an invitation to stay in her own house with Antal, her ex-son-in-law, who bought it. But even though she still treats Antal like a son, she pays little attention to his invitation. In fact, she is more than a little befuddled by grief.

Iza is self-assured and always tries to do the right thing. However, she allows her mother no input into her own fate. She arranges to sell her mother’s house to Antal and puts her mother on a train directly after the funeral, not even giving her time to attend the little gathering that was planned. When eventually Ettie arrives in Pest expecting to see her furniture and little keepsakes, she finds Iza has sold or given away most of her possessions.

Ettie just wants to be useful. Although a simple soul who is easily frightened, she is still an active woman in her 70’s who is used to doing everything for herself and her husband. In Pest, she thought she could cook and clean for her daughter, but Iza has a housekeeper and doesn’t want Ettie to interfere. Iza believes Ettie should be happy to relax, but Ettie literally has nothing to do.

Iza works hard and then wants time alone or with her friends. It takes a remark from Domokos, Iza’s lover, to make her realize that Ettie is lonely. But even when they try to arrange a treat for Ettie, it’s something they want to do rather than something that would please Ettie.

The introduction to the NYRB edition says the novel asks what to do with the old and talks about Ettie’s inability as a country person to adapt to the city, but I think this novel is more a character study of Iza, a person who always thinks she knows best and is blind to the feelings of others. Her marriage to Antal was her only failure, and she still doesn’t understand why he left, since he was clearly in love with her. It’s a fascinating but sad novel.

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Review 2065: The Invisible Bridge

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One of the reasons I learned to love reading was that I got swept up into another time or place or even world. As I got older and more discriminating, this experience happened less often. It happened most recently within a few pages of starting The Invisible Bridge, which I read for my James Tait Black project.

Andras Lévi, a young Hungarian Jew, arrives in Paris in 1937 to study architecture. He has brought with him a letter that an acquaintance asked him to mail once he was in Paris. He mails the letter but notices the address.

Soon he is involved in the technicalities of art school, made more difficult because he almost immediately loses his scholarship, a first act of the anti-Semitisim that is perceptibly increasing, although not as bad in Paris as it was in Budapest. He seeks a job at a theater from Zoltán Novak, a man he met on the train from Hungary. When he begins a friendship there with an older actress, she sends him to lunch with friends at the address on the envelope he mailed, and that’s how he meets Klara, an older woman with whom he falls madly in love.

This novel, which starts out seeming very particular, about a love affair between two people, grows into a novel of great breadth, covering events of World War II, the Hungarian Holocaust, life in work camps, the siege of Budapest. All of it is centered in the importance of family.

I absolutely loved this novel. It is sweeping, wonderfully well written, touching, harrowing. And what a story, based on the lives of Orringer’s grandparents. I can’t recommend this book enough.

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Review 1814: Temptation

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From before his birth in a Hungarian village in 1912, Béla is unwanted. His mother, away working in Budapest, pays Rozi to care for him. But when his mother can’t pay, Rozi doesn’t feed him. So, at age seven, he begins stealing to feed himself.

Rozi also makes him work instead of going to school, that is until he, thirsting for knowledge, goes to the schoolteacher. At school, he begins finding success, until an incident results in him being shipped off to Budapest to live with his mother.

Béla must forget about schooling in Budapest, because his mother has found him a job in a fancy hotel. Unfortunately, as an apprentice he is not paid, and he and his mother are barely scraping by, scrambling to pay rent and eating seldom.

At work, Béla meets Elamér, who begins instructing him in Socialism. Although the Democratic Socialist party is legal, the right-wing government behaves as if it is not. Then Béla is distracted by his infatuation with Her Excellency, a beautiful member of the nobility who uses the boys in the hotel for sex.

Within a background of a country sliding toward chaos and Fascism, we follow Béla in his enthralling journey toward political self-awareness. This picaresque novel is vital and exciting. What a great story!

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Day 350: The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

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Cover for The Man Who Went Up in SmokeAt first, I thought this novel, written in 1966, was a little more dated than Roseanna, by the same authors. However, except for the formality in the characters’ dress, it stopped feeling dated after awhile.

Inspector Martin Beck has been on vacation with his family less than a day when he is called back to take charge of an unusual case. A Swedish journalist named Alf Mattson has been reported missing by his editor. The difficulty is that he disappeared in Budapest. There can be no official investigation because the Hungarian police have not received an official request for assistance, so Beck must travel to Budapest unofficially.

In Budapest Beck is able to retrace Mattson’s movements right up until he disappeared, one day after arriving. He visits a youth hostel where Mattson spent the first night and hears through his colleagues back in Sweden that Mattson claimed to have a girlfriend there. But when Beck finds her, she denies knowing Mattson.

Beck feels himself at a loss. His discussions with the Budapest police have not gone very far. The police can’t conduct a full-blown investigation until Mattson’s visa expires, but they have made some inquiries. It is not until Beck is viciously attacked that he understands he is getting somewhere.

Sjöwall and Wahlöö are known for having reinvented the police procedural, and many of its present-day conventions were first used in their novels. The novels are well written and deal with common people more often than with career criminals or gangsters.