Skylark in NYRB Classics

Jan 12, 2011 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: nyrb, recommended-novels, translation, read-in-2011, love-the-cover

To be completely superficial let me start by saying that for a book concerning ugliness, this has a beautiful cover. The colors are gorgeous and fine -dark ochre and robin's egg blue- and the sans serif type and Hungarian accents top it off like fragile bones.

But looks aren't everything. I was also bowled over by the story, which is both heartbreaking and very funny. It's set in a distinctive time and place, but what's portrayed is accessible to anyone.

Before going into it, it’s important to kn To be completely superficial let me start by saying that for a book concerning ugliness, this has a beautiful cover. The colors are gorgeous and fine -dark ochre and robin's egg blue- and the sans serif type and Hungarian accents top it off like fragile bones.

But looks aren't everything. I was also bowled over by the story, which is both heartbreaking and very funny. It's set in a distinctive time and place, but what's portrayed is accessible to anyone.

Before going into it, it’s important to know that this book has a lot of laughs. I laughed out loud at the theater scene. I laughed at how the writer poked fun at the characters’ sentimentality. I laughed at the drunken “ride” in the chair, at the father’s confrontation with a man he’d hoped would wed his daughter, the funny title headings, and at many exchanges between the couple. It’s the humorous touch and the irony that makes it surprising how sad this book is.

The story is about a couple and their 35-year old unmarried daughter, Skylark, who is their life's focus and its albatross. Because Skylark suffers, they suffer. Because Skylark has no way to escape her sad, uneventful life, they resolve to a sad and uneventful life, cutting themselves off from the community and friends and everything else that brings sensual or intellectual pleasure - the theater, good food, cigars, music.

This self-imposed deprivation is painful for the characters, but tedium in its sameness is a great soother, and the alternative would throw Skylark's situation into stark relief. That's what happens when she goes away for a week to visit relatives, leaving her parents alone. They loosen up, and the thought of Skylark loses its grip, until they are confronted with her return.

Skylark seems an average, able person; unfortunately she lacks any gifts, talent or any particular characteristic that would make her attractive, or enrich her inner life, like a keen mind or a love of music, say, or poetry. Significantly the father’s only pastime is studying genealogy, as his own family tree is about to stop branching.

Skylark’s ugliness comes across almost as a disability, as when we first encounter her in the garden in the posture that is “best” for her, or when she walks flanked by her parents. Although she never really seeks to manipulate anyone, Skylark’s presence is oppressive. The family doesn’t eat in restaurants because she has a sensitive stomach. Her frugality means they use only one bulb in a four-bulb chandelier. Her parents love her dotingly in an effort to ease her loneliness, and they hate her because they are powerless to change it.
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Aug 30, 2011 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it

Shelves: read2011, nyrb, location-hungary

Some of this book feels folkloric - the public crying, the walks through the town, the roles of children and their parents; all of this moves throughout the story with many unique townspeople in the background adding color.

As the story progresses, there are these moments where a scene seems pretty typical but all of the sudden a character will reveal a thought that is either profound or so incredibly honest that it is almost gut-wrenching. My favorite moment for this is when "Editor Ijas" is out ...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Nicholas During rated it really liked it

A beautiful little book. In places hilarious, depressing, moving, and though-provoking, this book made me think about the alternate realities. The parents of Skylark have sacrificed their lives and fun to stay home with their notoriously ugly daughter and console her with unyielding love. When she goes away for a week-long trip they rediscover the joys of socializing and going out. Skylark herself has hidden her misery to save the feelings of her parents, and they both continue to move forward w ...more

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Dec 19, 2016 Amy Gentry rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nyrb-classics, spinster-lit

First mildly pleasant, then funny, then crushingly cruel, this little slice-of-life comedy set in a tiny Austro-Hungarian village followed the formula for all my favorite spinster-lit stories with delightful economy. I was just chuckling along with it until the very end, when it sucker-punched me with the devastation of human loneliness. Score!

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