The Door
A hauntingly beautiful literary classic on female friendship from twentieth-century Hungary
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4.5 • 8 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
'A dark domestic fairy tale' New York Times
A young writer employs a housekeeper - and slowly finds herself the sole keeper of the older woman's sercrets.
Magda is a writer, Emerence her housekeeper. Magda is new to their quiet Hungarian town, while Emerence, fierce and enigmatic, knows and is known by all. Though Emerence enters Magda’s home whenever she pleases, the door to Emerence’s own strange abode remains barred. Still, somehow, over the course of twenty years, an intimate trust is built between the two, rich with shared confidences.
Yet when this trust is betrayed one dark afternoon, the pair’s complex relationship will be left forever altered, and Magda will find herself haunted until the end of her days.
For not all doors are made to be opened.
'A bone-shaking book' New Yorker
Translated by Len Rix
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this poignant but long-winded novel by the late Hungarian author Szab , a writer recounts her decades-long relationship with and eventual betrayal of her enigmatic and emotionally volatile housekeeper. The story opens in postwar Hungary, narrated from old age by the protagonist, who remains unnamed for much of the novel. After having their careers "politically frozen," the narrator and her husband (also a writer) begin to work again and seek out domestic help for their new home in Budapest. They hire Emerence Szered s, a local peasant with an air of authority and "strength like a Valkyrie." Though Emerence initially proves an antagonistic worker attacking the narrator's belief in God, for instance she eventually develops a deep affection for, and reliance upon, her employers. Over the years, she reveals secrets about her childhood and her peripheral involvement in Hungary's troubled political past, ultimately inviting the narrator into her apartment, which she notoriously and suspiciously protects. Szab is a master tension builder, and Emerence's demise (foretold in the novel's opening pages) is heartbreakingly rendered. But an abundance of unnecessary detail weighs down what is otherwise a lucid and politically intriguing character study.
Customer Reviews
The Door
Extraordinary story. Multilayered and a superb sense of a East European community moving forward, but still dealing with its past. The relationship between Emerence and “The Lady Writer” was her name ever used ? was in parts intense, humorous and sad. The dog Viola was a hoot. I’m sure anyone who gets to the book will enjoy it.