What Are You Reading: The Invisible Bridge
After “How are you?” the second question my father asks me whenever we speak is “What are you reading?” We swap recommendations and talk about favorite authors and what’s next in the TBR list. He knows I like books set during the WW2 era that have a different angle on historical events. So he suggested I look into “The Invisible Bridge” by Julia Orringer.
We meet Andras Lévi, a young, pre-WW2 Jewish Hungarian man (because that was how Jewish people were classified in the days of the Reich, your religion first followed by the country of your birth) eagerly yet with great trepidation setting forth from Budapest to Paris to begin his schooling to become an architect. The writing is lovely and so rich with detail I can imagine myself in all the scenes. I can smell the day-old pastries and stale coffee, the tiny, damp student apartments, and the thin film of bravado over each character’s deep-set fears. All is spread before Andras and his friends, yet all could be lost as the inevitable fact of Hitler’s reach expands across Europe. And that reach is set as a kind of background motif, with the catch of a headline, a letter bringing sorrowful news, a discussion among the students as to what they might be facing if the seemingly inevitable lands on their doorsteps.
Meanwhile, Andras is building a life in Paris, deepening friendships, learning his craft, falling in love…and all the while worried about his family. And we will see why.
It’s a long novel, but I got completely sucked in and wanted to stay with these characters even more as the percentage left to read got smaller.
The story of what Hungarian Jews faced during Hitler’s reign doesn’t get much attention. Thanks in most part to its craven leadership at the time, Hungary had an alliance with Germany. This didn’t exempt the country’s Jewish population from Hitler’s plan, however. But it did condemn them to forced labor in service of the Reich’s war machine—until they were no longer able to work.
Most of my ancestors fled from Eastern Europe to America; some were killed in Cossacks’ pogroms and Hitler’s concentration camps. This pulls me tighter to stories about what people suffered and how they stayed alive and hopeful. I fell in love with the characters in this novel, their strength, their weakness, their fierce love and hatred for each other. And learning the history of this period of time in Hungary, I can’t help but think about the current political situation in Eastern Europe, and the specter of more and more territory clawed back by Russia.
It’s a great story and I recommend it highly. I’m only sorry that the 2011 bestseller hadn’t landed on my radar sooner.
What are you reading?
