Book Review by Jeanette Rehnstrom
Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai’s first novel from 1985 is his second to be translated into English (by George Szirtes). It’s taken a long time, but here it is, and we should be grateful for its arrival. It’s here to take us on one hell of a dance where our senses are assaulted but never exhausted, unless we’re unable to focus and relax into its complicated, constantly churning body (at which point you might want to put it down while you compose yourself).
Krasznahorkai loves to let his sentences meander, and isn’t in the least hung up on tidying them into neat little packages, so you simply have to let go and let yourself be carried down the stream. This is a book that eats itself, and all we can do is marvel at the contortionist manner in which it does it, and the very pungent, vivid life it reveals.
In a village somewhere in a somewhere world, we find a host of characters on the brink of destitution and rebirth. Futaki, a disabled man with a healthy attitude of mistrust and self-confidence, takes us into the book on a whirlwind of unrelenting language that won’t let up, even when the reins are handed over to more pliable hosts.
Nevertheless, it all begins with a bell. Futaki hears a bell ring, and is deeply disturbed by its presence. It’s an impossible bell, an impossible sound in the dismal surroundings where neither church nor chapel is known to still be standing. Futaki is thrown off course and rushes out to see what it’s all about.
One by one we are introduced to the rest of the cast, left over in what seems a previously fairly well-off little village: the doctor, the local prostitutes, the farmer, a little grim girl with learning difficulties and her evil brother, the holy moly, the seductress, and so on, but also two men somehow linked to the state services who no longer reside in the miserable midst of the place but instead are off in the city, seemingly coming up with dubitable plans for a return.
It’s this return that the people who have stayed put come to take as a way out. They’re hoping that the leader of the two men, Irimiás, will be their saviour, their sound of hope, but what seems increasingly likely is that Irimiás has hopes of his own which have little to do with the rescuing of the futures of the locals. Prepare to be enthralled as well as disgusted, and to begin again.
