Adrian Buck’s Reviews > Abigail > Status Update

"First I lost my husband, then my son. I don't want anyone else to lose theirs in such a pointless war, fought for such alien principles." - she can't be talking about reversing Trianon, what alien principles are these - Naziism?

"Abigail was lying!" - well, yes: the theme of misrepresentation runs all through the book, and explores when it morally good to lie, to whom and about what.

"In any work of literature, the most interesting bits are in the detail," - how to read this novel, tips from the author.

"She knew that when the front reached Árkod no wall in the Matula would be thick enough, no cellar sufficiently secure." - my mother-in-law hiding in the cellar when the Russians came to Tetétlen.

"What upset [Kalmár] him now was that once again Vitay, his favourite, would have to be punished." - hard to believe that Gini would be his favourite, she's hardly 'motor' material.

"But those revelations lay in the distant future. What the immediate future held for Gina was the winter of 1944." - and we all now what happened to Hungary then. These flashforwards are the most striking literary device this novel uses, especially for one so dependent on a big denouement".

"...she had witnessed another of those miraculous little scenarios at which the Matula was so adept: nothing had happened at all, or, if anything had, it was of no importance, there had been no unseemly language or ugly behaviour, nothing has been said that was unworthy of the school, and no hard words had passed between members of the teaching staff." - seems familiar

"The moment she set eyes on the decor she knew at once what it was that, even more than her personal problems, had so oppressed her inside the walls of the fortress." - a house is not a home without your decor.

"Thank you, Vitay," the class chorused.
"May it do you good," Gina muttered.

Superb translation of "Egészségetekre!", but why 'mutter' for 'suttog'?

"The girls were forever complaining about being kept on a tight leash, but as soon as someone applied a lighter touch and allowed them a looser reign they showed how deeply the system was engrained in them by despising his kindness as weakness."