Katalin Street by Len Rix

Abstract

she picks apart our understanding of reality and reliability, challenging assumptions of the truth while examining the nature of friendship and life in urban spaces. Elena is a young and educated publishing professional who finds herself struggling financially after being downgraded from a contract employee to an independent worker. Struggling to make ends meet, she takes in a roommate named Susana, who has just returned to Madrid after years of living abroad. The two women get off to a rocky start, with Susana’s quirks and elusive behavior underscoring Elena’s sense of isolation. Eventually the two reach a level of intimacy by nature of their proximity , a growing domestic warmth that is juxtaposed against Elena’s frequent observations of the changing city around her. Living on the margins of the lower middle class, Elena notes the economic hardship sweeping the city and changing the way people live. But while the story feels straightforward , there’s more to it than meets the eye. The novel opens with a brief story Susana tells Elena, about a period of poor mental health and the intense sexual encounters she sought during that time. Susana is positioned as an unreliable narrator, with Elena interjecting to speak directly to the reader about her misgivings and to share personal asides. The dynamic, which carries over into the Elena-narrated bulk of the novel, is clear: Elena is trustworthy, while Susana might be exaggerating or flatout deceitful. But a twist later in the novel challenges the perspective from which the reader has approached the narrative, making a simple story a deeper meditation on the way we give our trust to those who tell us stories. Written in a unique voice that evokes the alienation Elena feels so deeply, Navarro ’s novel is a complex yet not overwhelming work that deals as adeptly with relationships between people as it does with the relationship people feel to their cities and their work. Pinning it all together with subtle effectiveness, the larger questions the book raises are pleasantly jarring. Taken as a whole, the novel is thoroughly gripping. Bridey Heing Washington, DC Magda Szabó. Katalin Street. Trans. Len Rix. New York. New York Review Books Classics. 2017. 235 pages. Katalin Street is the third Magda Szabó novel to be published by New York Review Books Classics. Szabó, who died in 2007, was a Hungarian author whose work examined the intersections of fascism, betrayal, family, and love, among other topics. Her prose is a powerful reminder of just how resonant the relationship between language and memory can be, especially when entangled within the matrices of families and communities living under the shadow of fascism. Katalin Street, which won the Prix Cévennes for Best European Novel in 2007, depicts the lives of three families thrown together on Katalin Street in Budapest from the prewar period up to the tumultuous unrest of 1968. The children who figure prominently in the three families are Blálint, the son of the major; Irén and Blanka Elekes; and the shy and reserved Henriette Held. When the Germans arrive in Budapest in 1944, members of the Held family, who happen to be Jewish, are placed into hiding until they are discovered and deported. However, Henriette manages to escape deportation only to suffer a no less tragic fate. World Literature in Review 78 WLT NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017 As provocative as the events in the novel are, the style Szabó employs is also worthy of our attention. The novel itself can be confusing until the reader discovers that it is not told in a linear sequence. This confusion adds to the overall atmosphere of the novel, an atmosphere that is heavy with foreboding. The disruptive manner of the novel’s beginning highlights the coming storm that the Germans, and later the Soviets, are bringing to Hungary. Moreover, each chapter in the “Moments and Episodes” section switches between third person and first, which is told from Irén’s point of view, thereby juxtaposing a detached and intimate point of view. There are moments in Katalin Street when one is strongly reminded of Harry Mulisch’s The Assault. Both novels deal with German occupation and the culpability of...