A Book of Memories: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Not quite worth the effort
Review: A Book of Memories is a vast, challenging novel that is alternately rewarding and disappointing. When it connects -- as in the vivid anecdotes illustrating the way Stalinism corrupted the personal lives of all Hungary's inhabitants during the early 1950s -- it can be very powerful. However, I found that too much of the book was dedicated to ruminative digressions describing, in minutest detail, the inner workings of the protagonist's mind. At first, these were interesting, but after a while they became tiresome. A Book of Memories has its significant rewards, but they require a big chunk of reading time to wade through the chaff. For me, it was not worth it.

Rating:
Summary: DRIVEL
Review: I cannot believe I wasted my time reading this long, overly dramatic, boring, pretentious drivel that strove much too hard to be art and ended up as good kindling.

Rating:
Summary: Well-written and sensually charged . . .
Review: I enjoyed this book not only for its complicated plot and rich prose, but also for the way Nadas weaves multiple stories together; I've seen this is most of his other novels where the so-called "plot" becomes entangled with other narrators and other times, sort of like Louise Erdrich on acid. All in all, I love the way he describes sensory material present both in the world and internally, and the way both become ensnared. If you don't like a good, rich, complicated novel, stick to John Grisham.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic novel
Review: I know that its difficult to read this long novel, but if you read it once, you'll never forget it! This book of Nádas Péter is one of the greatest Hungarian and Europian novel! Its an excellent philosophical, psychical, and historic work, so I recommend it to everyone. I read it in its original language, but I think that the English version is must be great as well. If you like Thomas Mann's, Proust's or Musil's works you will surely enjoy this one.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic novel
Review: I know that its difficult to read this long novel, but if you read it once, you'll never forget it! This book of Nádas Péter is one of the greatest Hungarian and Europian novel! Its an excellent philosophical, psychical, and historic work, so I recommend it to everyone. I read it in its original language, but I think that the English version is must be great as well. If you like Thomas Mann's, Proust's or Musil's works you will surely enjoy this one.

Rating:
Summary: well written...
Review: I was drawn into reading this book by the comparisons with Proust, which I don't think are really justified. It is a very good book, and has some superficial similarities, but I didn't find the same psychological insight in Nadas that Proust had. Nadas seems to have an exceptionally keen eye for external detail, and has many brilliant descriptions of things, but I don't think he has the same brilliance for interior, psychological details. A simple way to put it would be that where Proust writes about love, Nadas writes about sex.

The book also suffers from overly clever and elliptical story-telling, weaving together two distinct plots (which are confusingly both told in the first person, by very similar narrators), without clear indications of when it switches from one to the other. Nadas also adopts a faulkneresque non-linear narrative style, jumping around in time, which further confuses the issue. A few more concessions to readability would have benefitted the book enormously, in my opinion.

A last comment is that the book's central, climactic events hinge around the Hungarian revolution in 1950, but it assumes the reader already knows all the events of that period. If you don't know the timeline of events and the internal politics of Hungary during this turmoil, you would do well to brush up on it before reading Nadas's work.

Rating:
Summary: Good but difficult
Review: I was drawn into reading this book by the comparisons with Proust, which I don't think are really justified. It is a very good book, and has some superficial similarities, but I didn't find the same psychological insight in Nadas that Proust had. Nadas seems to have an exceptionally keen eye for external detail, and has many brilliant descriptions of things, but I don't think he has the same brilliance for interior, psychological details. A simple way to put it would be that where Proust writes about love, Nadas writes about sex.

The book also suffers from overly clever and elliptical story-telling, weaving together two distinct plots (which are confusingly both told in the first person, by very similar narrators), without clear indications of when it switches from one to the other. Nadas also adopts a faulkneresque non-linear narrative style, jumping around in time, which further confuses the issue. A few more concessions to readability would have benefitted the book enormously, in my opinion.

A last comment is that the book's central, climactic events hinge around the Hungarian revolution in 1950, but it assumes the reader already knows all the events of that period. If you don't know the timeline of events and the internal politics of Hungary during this turmoil, you would do well to brush up on it before reading Nadas's work.

Rating:
Summary: Exposing the Soul During a Historical Turning Point
Review: I was drawn to the cover ... a photo of the Hungarian Parliament building sitting on the edge of the Danube ... surrounded by a fog. Had I listened to the old adage "Don't judge a book by its cover" ... most likely I would *not* have read the book. This is a highly complex and controversial book but *not* as one would expect, because of its political contents, the most probable reason that it was a five year battle with the censors in Hungary before it was permitted to be published. No ... the world has long acknowledged there was repression experienced in Central and Eastern Europe during the post World War II Communist occupation of this region. In fact, many books have been published examining the causes and outcomes of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. This book is risque because of the highly personal experiences revealed by the sensitive and intelligent main character whose memoirs we are reading. The daring revelations could push people's "buttons", those who make moral judgements about what two consenting adults do during intimate moments, those of the same gender or opposite. Frankly, had I known this was in the book, I would not have bought it. As it stands, the events unfolded gradually and amazingly, I was not shocked, after all, it was the main character's memoirs. The emotional complexity of the novel intertwines on many levels, with many different recollections of life experiences at different ages. The descriptions are highly personal and direct, it is as if we, the reader have a connection to how the character's mind works. The writing is elegant, the emotions are deep, the thoughts are intense ... It is a serious novel written with great attention to detail and texture. The descriptions of people's actions, the interpretation of their feelings and responses shows the author, Peter Nadas to be a man of refined sensitivity and superior intelligence. His description of the personal impact of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 on the lives of everyday people is extremely accurate and most highly impressive. I can say this because my family lived through it. The event divided us by many hundreds of thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean ... from our relatives ... although it also created closer emotional ties to our homeland, Hungary.

The book begins when the main character is living in East Berlin, he recalls the topsy turvy life he leads, describing the eccentric people who are his friends ... and his experiences during those turbulent times. The writing is complex because interwoven within the novel are connections to past events when the main character was growing up. We learn of his childhood and friends, who later play major roles in his emotional expiation of life experiences. Overall, this book is recommended for its profound and beautiful writing ... with reservations for those who are puritanical in their tastes about reading very personal intimate revelations. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

Rating:
Summary: Confusing and not very rewarding read.
Review: I was very disappointed in this book, which was hailed as being like Proust, like Mann, Joyce, etc. I didn't find the depth of any of these authors in this novel; it was confusing and difficult to read. Maybe this is because I don't understand enough about the last three decades behind the Iron Curtain. But the book did not illumine them! To me, it just seemed to go endless and boringly into the characters' sexual pecularities. This sounds as if the book would at least be sexy, but it was not. There was a lot of material that I felt could have been interesting -- the whole plot line about one narrator and his father, who was involved in the repressive regime, for instance. But the way it was presented, I just grew more and more confused and bored. I much prefer other Hungarian literature I have read, such as Moricz's BE FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH and anything by Kozstolanyi, but these books tend to be harder to find.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't live up to the hype
Review: Not a bad book, though a little hard to read. Nadas writes well, but he's no Proust or Musil, and it's difficult to become engrossed by this story.