‘The village became this pulsating united entity of horrors.’
Synopsis: Rémtörténetek was written by the Hungarian author Nádas Péter.
He is a well-known and respected writer, dramatist, and essayist born in Budapest on the 14th of October in 1942. He won countless awards and wrote myriad novels, dramas, essays, and critics, and seriously if you look at his page on Wikipedia it’s a never-ending, mind-blowing list.
Our bittersweet nostalgic horror story starts somewhere around the end of the 60s or maybe even the 70s. It is a guessing game just like everything about this book. We are definitely in Hungary in a little village that’s just beside the Danube.
In this little waterside village, we have the pleasure to meet our main characters; We have Teréz (cognate of Teresa, pronunciation: [ˈtɛreːz]) who is an elderly hard-working lady who brings the Sun, the Moon, the stars, and all the other celestial objects down to Earth with her fluent swearing.
She is not well respected in her community due to the fact that she was a teenage mom 70 years ago and the village thinks this ‘shameful’ past should never leave her. Therefore, just like a shadow, it sticks with her all through her life, doesn’t matter how long or how hard she works.
She has Róza working for/with her daily. Róza (cognate of Rosa, pronunciation: [ ˈroːzɒ]) our next main character is an unwed mother of multiple children who also suffers from epilepsy, and who gets abused and raped by the man of the village from a very young age. She comes off as an extremely strong and resilient woman who is also naive and innocent to the same degree. And although Teréz is complaining and being a pessimistic old lady with her all the time, still cares for her and loves her in her own cranky way.
We also get to know Imre (Hungarian male name, pronunciation: [ ˈimrɛ] ) a young man who doesn’t have a father. He was born out of wedlock therefore no one acknowledges his presence. So much so that no one even wants to call him by his real name. He became an assistant in the local bakery shop thanks to his strong physicality and relentless work attitude but he has no friends or anyone to talk to. He has his mother but that relationship stands somewhere in between; ‘extremely toxic’ and ‘complete negligence’. But there is one person who managed to listen and talk with Imre, Piroska.
Piroska (cognate of Prisca, pronunciation: [ ˈpiroʃkɒ]) is a university student who studies sociology. A very intelligent and emotionally mature young girl who talks with Imre for the sake of knowledge in her social studies. The young boy becomes her specimen but at the same time, she tries to analyze her own complicated and instinct-like feelings as well.
Piroska has a strong relationship with another young man Mihály (cognate of Mikaél, pronunciation: [ ˈmiɦaːj]) or Misike as everyone calls him in the book. Misike is a genius in a wheelchair. It wasn’t entirely clear to me if he was born with a disability or if some kind of disease attacked him when he was young but nevertheless, he is a master in chess, mathematics, and physics. He has muscle and speech problems and needs constant care. His mom devoted her entire life to helping and navigating him through life.
We also have a catholic priest, a teacher, and various other faces from the cacophony of the village. The book revolves around their every day and their philosophy of life.
Structure: The book has 464 pages and there are no chapters, sections, or any indication of where one narration starts and where it ends.
This gives this uncanny, vertigo-like feeling that you are on a carousel that orbits around a black hole at a speed where your skin starts to peel off.
I tend to, and I like to over-dramatize my reading experience because common words and impressions don’t seem to match my sentimental heart. Nevertheless, it is not an easy read. As I mentioned there are tons of unclear details in the book (like the exact place and time) where you are left with your intuitions and general knowledge to stitch the pieces together. Although, the location itself opened up a few of my beloved childhood chambers where I like to crawl up when the world grows cold around me. So that was definitely one of my favourite aspects of the book, the beautiful and nostalgic landscapes.
There are bad characters and there are characters who are making bad choices or having bad thoughts about themselves and the world as well. So there is a dark, dark, dark psychologically dark area and everything else is darkish grey. As I said, not an easy summer read but definitely a thick philosophical, hard-to-digest one.
My take on it: The whole story is a fluid shape-shifting ancient pagan beast gazing at you from the corner of your room.I’m not even joking.
Around the quarter of the book; when I realised that I am an utterly helpless orphan child trying to make sense of this story; I realised that something is coming.
A storm, a bad premonition, a curse if you will. You could feel it on the back of your neck. A sinister catastrophe was making its way to the characters to decide their fate once and for all. I could argue that what was coming for them could have been karma slamming the bills like a maniac down on their heads, like rolled-up newspapers.Or just simply a cold and calculated coincidence.
It could have been their subconscious moving, thinking, and feeling, like one gigantic connected entity biting its own tail.
But I think the writer is the one who has the closest guess; it is simply a horror story. A ghost dressed up in a white dress haunts each one of them until the sun goes down and the Moon comes up and years go by. Until a new generation comes and changes the look of the horizon.
Have a wonderful day with loads of books and thank you for reading this far.
Take care,
– NOLITETHOUGHTS –
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