Abigél in Never too Late to Read Classics

Jul 04, 2020 Sara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, historical-fiction, borrowed-from-library, world-war-2

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 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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Jan 28, 2020 Karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: travel-2020, translation-2020

Back in 2015 I read Szabo's The Door, and I really liked it, so when I saw that this book had just been translated from the Hungarian, I had to read it.

Abigail is a coming of age story during WWII in Hungary during a short time frame: Autmn 1943 - March 1944. ...more

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Apr 26, 2021 Janet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book gives us a view of war torn Hungary in 1943. We follow the struggles of Gina, a free spirit prior to this, to comply, learn, and get along with others.

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