The Door by Magda Szabó

The Door by Magda Szabó is a haunting and unusual novel about the connection between two women. I read the translation from Hungarian by Len Rix. The story is narrated by a writer named Magda and describes her relationship with her servant Emerence. Magda begins the story by recounting a recurring nightmare and makes a dark confession.

Set in Budapest, Hungary, Magda’s story then winds back in time to recount how she and her husband decide to hire Emerence as their servant. Magda’s writing career is finally thriving again after it was restrained by the Hungarian government and various forces for years. To have enough time for her work, she tries to hire Emerence do the housework. Emerence is unusual and strong-willed. She tells Magda that she needs time to decide whether to take the job as she doesn’t work for just anyone.

In her own time, Emerence chooses to work for Magda and her husband. Emerence gets all the housework done, but keeps her own odd schedule. She has many other obligations in their neighborhood. Magda and Emerence have a love-hate relationship characterized by misunderstanding, cruelty, duty, and affection. It is a troubling portrayal of two unlikable and complex women over the course of 20 years.

Emerence doesn’t show Magda a whit of respect for her writing; instead, she values working with her hands. Magda resents Emerence at times, but is fascinated by her. She slowly pieces together Emerence’s life story, but she is never able to obtain a full picture of her. Magda sometimes longs for Emerence to be a mother figure to her, but she fails to be a dutiful daughter when called to do so.

The story ends in tragedy, and the ending is ambiguous and haunting. The writer is unnamed until late in the novel when she is referred to as Magdushka a single time. I was left wondering if the novel was autobiographical or not.

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Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Cat’s Cradle is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut that was published in 1963. The story is a wild, satirical tale told by a narrator named John, who wants the reader to call him Jonah. Told in flashback, John is working on a book, called The Day the World Ended, about what people were doing on the day the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

John is particularly interested in the late Felix Hoenikker, a creator of the atomic bomb, and he plans to interview Hoenikker’s children and coworkers. Along the way, he learns that Felix Hoenikker invented a substance called ice-nine, which acts as a seed crystal to make water freeze at room temperature.

Later on, another writing assignment brings John to San Lorenzo, a fictional island in the Caribbean. Hoenikker’s three children, Frank, Angela, and Newt, are all there too. During his journey to San Lorenzo, John learns about Bokononism, a humorous religion based on lies. When he reaches the island, he meets the beautiful Mona and the island's dying dictator. So much happens that it's hard to even summarize.

One of my favorite parts was the vocabulary from the The Books of Bokonon. The term karnass refers to a team of seemingly random people that carries out God's will. They're the people that each life is tangled together with for no logical reason. In contrast, a granfalloon is a false karnass, or a meaningless grouping of people, for instance, "any nation, anytime, anywhere."

Cat’s Cradle has short chapters, each serving a purpose of making a commentary. The book is dark, cynical, and absurd, with commentary on science, religion, government, business, and the (lack of) meaning of life.

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Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda is a collection of intertwined short stories featuring living humans interacting with ghosts and spirits. Matsuda’s inspiration for each story came from Japanese folktales, legends, kabuki, rakugo, and plays. She provides synopses for the original tales at the end of the book. I read the English translation from the Japanese by Polly Barton.

The stories are unique in that the ghosts and spirits are growing, learning, and changing. The spirits are not scary, horrifying, or frightening; instead, they exist side by side with the living. The collection begins with the story of a young woman who is blaming herself after her boyfriend breaks up with her. The ghost of her aunt who died by suicide appears to the woman, reminding her not to destroy her strength. Later, the young woman’s cousin (her aunt’s grieving son) appears in other stories. Many of the stories are interconnected. Some stories are connected by the characters, others by their themes, and still others by their location.

I enjoyed the stories and wish I was familiar with the originals. In this season of ghosts, reading this volume was a good reminder that there are spirits all around us, if we just open our eyes to them.

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The Dinner by Herman Koch

The Dinner by Herman Koch is a dark, corrosive tale about bad people doing bad things. I read the English translation of the novel from the Dutch by Sam Garrett. Set in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the book tells the story of two brothers and their wives who meet for dinner at a fancy restaurant to discuss a family matter involving their sons.

The book’s sections are named for the dinner’s five courses: aperitif, appetizer, main course, dessert, and digestif. Paul Lohman and his wife Claire arrive at the restaurant first. They await the arrival of Paul’s brother Serge and Serge's wife Babette. Serge is a famous politician who is planning to run for Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

Paul is the narrator, and he’s an unreliable one. Beyond that, he’s a sociopath. Paul is aware that his son Michel and Serge’s son Rick have committed a heinous crime. Their violent act was recorded on video, but the boys have not yet been identified. Over the course of the dinner, their parents must decide—should they turn their sons in, or should they cover up and ignore their crime?

To any reader with a moral compass, the decision is obvious, but these characters lack morals.


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The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

The Blue Castle (1926) is one of my favorite stories by L.M. Montgomery. It’s about a woman’s rebellion and rebirth as she gains the courage to be herself. I re-read the novel this year after many years while sitting near a castle. It was time for a re-read, and I had just the right spot.

Valancy Stirling starts out as a meek, overlooked woman. She’s restricted by her overbearing, judgmental family and keeps her thoughts to herself. It’s only when she learns that she is dying that she truly begins to live.

The Blue Castle is a great novel to read when you need a little courage to change and grow or if you need a simple reminder to be yourself. It’s also perfect if you want to read a book with a romantic and happy ending.

If you know me, you know I love the author, and I’ve had a website about L.M. Montgomery and her writings for years.

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My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) is a novel by Ottessa Moshfegh about a depressed, unnamed 26-year-old woman who decides to hibernate for a year and emerge as a new person. The narrator seems to have it all—she’s young, she’s blond, thin, and beautiful, she’s wealthy and lives off an inheritance in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and she has a job at an art gallery in Chelsea.

Despite these privileges, she’s dissatisfied, dark, and miserable. We learn that her emotionally unavailable father died of cancer during her junior year at Columbia, and her unfeeling, alcoholic mother committed suicide weeks later. The narrator has little self esteem and has an on-again off-again relationship with Trevor, a cruel older man who works on Wall Street and uses her for sex. She has a complex, resentful relationship with her best friend Reva, whom she seems to judge, dislike, and tolerate. Reva’s mother is dying of cancer, but the narrator is so detached that she has no sympathy for her friend.

She says, "I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you'd feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide. Not that what I was doing was suicide. In fact, it was the opposite of suicide. My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life."

As the narrator begins to sleep more and more, she finds relief in the emptiness. She contacts an unethical psychiatrist named Dr. Tuttle, and lies about her symptoms, claiming to be an insomniac. Dr. Tuttle barely listens to the narrator, but prescribes her a wide array of pharmaceuticals to help her sleep.

She contemplates her library of psychopharmaceuticals thinking, "Life was fragile and fleeting and one had to be cautious, sure, but I would risk death if it meant I could sleep all day and become a whole new person."

Will the narrator’s plan work? Is sleep and escape from reality really the answer?

I bought this book sight unseen from Barnes and Noble. It was a surprise book, wrapped up and labeled with the above synopsis as part of a “Blind Date with a Book” display. I don’t think I would have picked the book up on my own, and selecting it helped expand my reading.

Although the narrator craved sleep throughout this book, the story kept me awake, reading until the very end.

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