Embers

Rating:
Summary: Finest piece of literature I have ever read
Review: Once in a while I come back to this Amazon page to see what others readers have to say about this book, trying to add another dimension to this book I love so much and inspire some more hours of elucubrations. How can a few hundred pages bring so much philosophy?
Marai was able to create a narrative that seems like two mirrors in front of each other, with an infinite succession of stories behind the apparent main story. From each interpretation you can affirm this is a book about friendship, romantic love, class relations, hierarquies, war, Europe's fall before WWII, or whatever. The two friends, their families, the deceased wife and the old maid play many roles in countless parallel interpretations.

Rating:
Summary: Should have been a classic!
Review: Embers is a terrific re-discovery and I for one am thankful that Knopf chose to translate and publish it. Embers is a slim novel filled with human emotion and pain. The novel begins with an old European aristocrat receiving a letter from a friend. The aristocrat then arranges to have said friend to his estate for dinner. It turns out that these two friends have not seen each other for forty-one years. Marai slowly unfolds the story of why and creates a compelling examination of guilt, anger, love and revenge. The aristocrat makes some rather disarming discoveries regarding his so-called friend. He talks on and on that evening, while the embers of the fire burn out, searching for answers to questions from his friend, questions that get to the heart of their relationship. Embers is an enthralling read. This amazing novel should have been amongst the classics. Highly recommended...

Rating:
Summary: The Savage Edge of High Civilization
Review: There is an edge to Embers that I cannot find in Mann, or Hesse, although those are no doubt two of my favrorite writters. This book utterly scortches the soul of the reader with a refined savagery and brooding retcicnce to divulge all of its secrets.

There is a dark, ragged edge to all the gleaming monuments of modern High Society. Embers tells a story that realy begins in the surreal, glittering Vienna of the turn of the centruy, but floats away accross Europe and the Orient back to a claustraphobic forrest and a castle that hasn't changed in 41 years, waiting for the return of one man, so that two people can write the final chapters in their lives.

This is a novel about the duality of hatred and brotherhood, the close interplay of love and death, the dark loneliness of isolation and spiritual questing and the self-loathing that drives it. Still, what I find to be it's most modern element is its protrayal of the adornments of chivalry and social refinment melded with rage, grief, and melancholy untill we cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. This seems to me the key to understanding the anguish of our modern world.

Marai is also a brilliant stylist. He has composed a book of such monumental themes, but he can express them all in subtle, mundane ways. Unlike other writers, specificaly Hesse, he strugles with these gigantic and intense themes, but in the end expresses them without defaulting to delirious episodes of wild fantasy. This book never veers away from our somber reality, the real, physical world that shackles all the characters, as well as its readers.

The book does not spend self-indulgent scores of pages on rambaling analysies, condescending to the reader as the author deigns to share his musings with them. Marai will simply throw out a ten word sentance that explodes in the mind of his audience with all the thought and anguish that goes unsaid with it's simple words. That's probably why this book is no longer than 200 pages or so. The book illustrates a mastery of the unsaid.

I have covered my walls with scraps of paper that bear such great quotes, two or three lines from the book that echo in my life. The book also has one of these on every page. He also has the first descriptions of music in poetry or prose that I realy related to. (Untill this book I felt odes and essays devoted to music simply were hollow, contrived ecstacies that paled in comparison to the actual experience of listening.)

In the end, I am forced to reconceptualize modern literature and modern society in the wake of this novel. There can be no higher recomendation.

Rating:
Summary: This one grabs you in a velvet vise and won't let go
Review: Originally published the year I was born (never mind; look it up yourself), Embers is primarily a very long discourse by The General to a mostly silent visitor, his longtime friend whom he hasn't seen in 41 years. The two old men were inseparable until an event occurred that irrevocably divided them and led to 4 decades of isolation from the world for both of them. The subject of this discourse, which took place over a dinner and extended thru the night in the General's Hungarian castle, was an analysis of the events that led up to the rupture of their friendship.
The material flows like oiled silk, rolling on and on in a way that modern writers would doubtless have trouble duplicating. This brilliant translation does ample justice to the rich, evocative language. We readers can smell the old rooms (recently dusted), taste the dinner, see the old men thru the candlelight, hear the pitch and timbre of voices, sense the tension, and suspect the denouement - but even when it occurs as anticipated, there are more surprises in store, surprises that are rooted in the wisdom of old age.
Don't miss this beautiful book.

Rating:
Summary: Let Konrad respond....
Review: Embers is an outstanding novel. The language, the descriptions, the writing style, the historic elements, the rare psychological insight into male bonding, etc., all make this novel well worth reading.

About three quarters way through the novel, the desire to scream at Henrik and demand that he shut up and allow Konrad to respond is overpowering. So evolves the suspense Marai weaves into this great work. Abide his technique, in the end you will be rewarded and left thinking about this novel for several days. In years to come, you will want to revisit this book over and over, as you gain with each reading deeper insight into a rare aspect of human relations seldom written about, and perhaps never written about so poignantly as in Embers. Such novels come far and few between all others.

Sandor Marai's literary skill equals that of other great 20th-century writers; how sad that he did not write more and his life took such a dreadful turn. An excellent week-end read!

Rating:
Summary: boring
Review: this book is over-rated...i just don't understand what appeal it has...i agree with a previous reviewer who recommended musil, who is a much more highly skilled (and intersting) writer.

Rating:
Summary: A review of "Embers" from two perspectives
Review: I was moved to add my voice to your reviews of "Embers" for two reasons: because it is such an excellent piece of literature, and because I have read it in its original Hungarian and now in English. Viewing it from such a unique perspective, I can say that it is an outstanding translation and is as effective in English as in Hungarian. While the setting may seem exotic to Americans, the problems it explores are deeply psychological and universal to mankind. While it may not be the choice of readers of popular action novels, it would appeal to serious readers of fine literature. (I speak as one who has worked as a translator, written fiction, and holds degrees in psychology.) The book explores the friendship and love of two men and the meaning of the rift that tears them apart for 41 years and defines the existence of at least one of them for the remainder of his life. The novel is developed masterfully, solely from the viewpoint of one of the men, through his well planned monologue in the presence of his friend, during which he wrestles aloud with the great questions that have defined his life. In the end we realize that the presence of his friend is almost incidental, as the speaker has come to grips with his questions through internal dialogue and soul searching over 41 years of self-enforced withdrawal from the world. In the end he seems content with his conclusions and complete within himself, having answered his own questions, although the presence of his friend was necessary in order to achieve his piece of mind.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book Club Book
Review: A fast read--some 200 pages with large print--that makes for some great discussion because the ending is so open-ended and much of the details obscure. Very understated and internal. It's a novel about relationships, about forgiving, about friendship. In our book club we debated somewhat heatedly about who knew what and when, what Konrad and Henrik's relationship was, why it ended the way it did, what was up with her picture, etc. Much more complex than you realize upon first reading. It seemed that Marai had a political message he was trying to convey that wasn't clear to me because I am uninformed about the historical context. Some parts of the book seemed to be muddled by the translation, but since I can't read it in Hungarian, it's hard to tell. A different sort of book that will make you think.

Rating:
Summary: Elegant Period Piece
Review: Sort of a 200 page monologue of an old soldier trying to sort out the meaning of life and reconcile the betrayal and loss associated with that betrayal and his abiding love for those who betrayed him. Seems to me to be a very European view of relationships, and probably early 20th century view at that. The story involves class differences as well as military discipline and Old World sensibilities.

Rating:
Summary: A Novella (not a novel) but a great one
Review: I consider this one of my favorite books of the year though I wouldn't recommend it to everybody. If you enjoy lengthy descriptions of furniture, scenery, clothes, fireplaces and interior and exterior monologues, then you will like this book. If you need a lot of action, several plots and subplots and/or multiple character development, then you should look elsewhere.

Embers develops two characters very well, describes their friendship in detail, and infers several powerful themes (jealousy, greed, revenge, importance of class structure) from their mutual story. After I read it, I wanted to discuss it and debate it immediately with another person. The themes resonated that strongly with me. My mother had also read it so we could and did debate the ending at length. We both loved the book; however, we both could see how others might find it less riveting.