Gina is the spoiled, 14-year-old only child of a wealthy widower—but since it's 1943 and her father is a general in the Hungarian army, she has to be sent away from home to be hidden in a strict Calvinist boarding school for her own safety.

Much of the tension of this coming-of-age story comes from what the reader knows that Gina hasn't figured out or can't yet foresee: how the war is going to end; what some of her teachers' statements and actions mean. The eastern Hungarian town in which the boarding school is located is far from the front, but daily life there is shaped both by the war and the presence of the Horthy regime. Magda Szabó is skilful at showing the reader more than Gina herself sees without making her main character seem implausible.

In fact, Gina is a very believable teenager, part sympathetic and part wildly annoying, growing up in fits and spurts. Where Szabó sometimes wobbles is in how she draws her other characters. Sometimes she sketches out a whole facet of someone's personality in a perceptive and humane line or two; yet sometimes her characters fail to convince as people. (Gina's classmates were the most glaring example of this for me. Sometimes their naivete/insularity/cliqueishness rang true for a group of sheltered mid-century teenagers at a remote boarding school; sometimes the swings of mood and action just seemed like cheap melodrama.)

Those reservations aside, this is an absorbing read. ( )

This is the Second World War. This is Hungary. A motherless but privileged young girl, Gina, who adores her father and is in turn adored by him, brought up in Budapest, is suddenly sent in some secrecy to a strict and Puritanical boarding school in the back end of nowhere. Things get off to a bad start when she alienates her classmates and has to learn the hard way that not everyone sees life as she does. But she learns. She becomes close to her classmates, learns to fit in, but discovers that life beyond the schoolroom is much more complex and frightening than she had known, and that she is in this isolated school for her own protection.

This is a school story, a saga about growing up, about the effects of war, and about facing one's fears. A glimpse into a part of Europe's history about which we know little in this country. ( )

Lovely novel -- great characters, a fascinating setting, and a plot that won't let go. I will read more Szabo. ( )

My second Szabo in as many weeks, and a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Set in an austere religious school in the middle of World War II, Szabo’s is a tale of contrasts. The young Gina, daughter of a Hungarian General, is placed in the school very abruptly by her father and enters a world deeply different from the one she has been plucked from. From finery and adoration to simplicity and loneliness, Gina makes her lot even worse by immediately offending the girls in her class.

What ensues is a bit of meanness that could really only be inflicted by girls of a certain age. What the reader understands, that the girls and Gina do not, is how entirely insignificant their worries are compared to the weighty issues being decided outside in the adult world. The war is waging, men are dying, decisions are being made, and most of them are life-threatening. There is the constant contrast between the serious proceedings of the razor blade world outside the school and the deceptively safe and removed space within it, and the fearful spaces where those worlds overlap.

And then there is the mysterious Abigail. Abigail, a statue that stands in the garden, hears the complaints and heartaches of the students, and often miraculously solves them. The all-seeing and all-knowing guardian of girls, whose presence becomes so very important to Gina.

I am taken with the writing style of Magda Szabo, it has the lyrical quality of a poet--it came as no surprise to learn poetry was her first love. She weaves a gripping story that moves with perfect pacing. Although I felt I had cracked the mystery at the heart of Abigail’s identity fairly early on, I changed my mind several times during the progress of the novel and found the final reveal quite satisfying. Like her other novel, Katalin Street, there is more going on beneath the story than one might initially suspect. There is Gina’s tale, of course, but there is also the political unrest of Hungary, both in the World War II setting and in the 1970’s world in which Szabo is writing. There is veiled commentary here if you wish to see it.

In the bit of biography at the preface to the novel are these words:

A member of the European Academy of Sciences and a warden of the Calvinist Theological Seminary in Debrecen, Szabo died in the city in which she was born, a book in her hand.

I like that. A good way to go.




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Nem tudom pontosan, hogy történt, de nekem ez a történet idáig minden formájában kimaradt. Biztosan más lett volna tizenévesen olvasni, költözés után, „ellenséges környezetben” jól is jött volna, kár, hogy nem nyomta senki a kezembe. Egyetlen részletet spoilereztek el nekem (csúnyán nézek, tudod, ki vagy ;)), de nem a lényeget. Az elég hamar világos volt felnőtt fejjel, ki a két fő emberünk, csak az nem, hogy igazából egy ember meg a segítője. Bár szerintem kár egyvalakit megnevezni, amikor csapatmunka, na mindegy, tény, nem tudtam, ki Abigél :). Remekül megírt könyv, hajnalba nyúlóan olvastam (miéééért nem nyomta valaki a kezembe tizenévesen?). Csak azért tettem félre majd' egy évre, mert amikor tavaly belekezdtem, iszonyúan nyomasztott az a sivárság, a magány sötétsége, hidegsége, ami a történet elején fogadja a főszereplőt. Túl jól van megírva, nem bírtam a sajátom mellé még az övét is elviselni. Hova is dicsérjem még, 2100 csillagozás és 95% mellett*? Akinek még nem volt szerencséje hozzá, annak annyit: felnőttként is érdemes pótolni.
*a molyon ( )