Last selection of the year: Hungarian writer Ãgota Kristóf’s hypnotic, powerful (and short) debut novel The Notebook. Published in 1986 it is a bracing language bath, narrated in first-person plural by limpid & disturbing young twins in the midst of wartime scarcity. First part of a trilogy (whole trilogy is great). Kristóf’s stark minimalism reads simply (the stylistic opposite of fellow Hungarian Krasznahorkai’s baroque apocalyptics) but after a few paragraphs the awe piles up and, subsumed in her grip, you realize how deep it all goes.
A stone cold classic (that’s impossible to discuss at a holiday party without alienating your peers)! So–
We’ll meet on Sunday December 21 to talk Notebook. Mudd Up Book Clubb.