This second part of my Hungarian trilogy has kept me busy for nearly a month and it is all so superduper tragic! How many doomed love affairs can I take? How many lunatics? Drunkards? Gamblers? Liars? Money grabbers? Sharp accountants and house keepers who rip off the naive upper classes who they 'serve'? Useless and corrupt politicians? Oiled moustaches? 'Terrorist'Romanian priests? Duels? Gluttony? Abused wives? Evil mothers? Intelligent female cattle breeders? I feel that I am living and breathing life in Hungarian Transylvania and loving every minute of it. I'm up to 1910 and I know that life is not going to get any better for these people! I just wonder how much more everyone can take.
My favourite character Laszlo got so drunk, left the love of his life after he dramatically threw his life savings at her and then walked through the snow all night, swigging from his bottle and ended up falling into an open frozen sewer. This awful event happened about two thirds in and he was never mentioned again. I'm desperate to know what the hell happened to him, so I have to delve straight into book three. Im sure he didn't die in that frozen hole! There hasn't been a funeral.
I haven't been so engrossed in a set of books like this for years. Each one is as thick as a door stop so I am glad I am reading it on my kindle. I love how all the characters are so well described, I love and hate them all with a passion. No one is bland, that's what I appreciate most. It's full of people and families and I get confused with who is who. But to be honest it doesn't really matter, I'm sure that is part of the charm.
I also like how the modern and old lives collide in this book. People are driving cars but still organising duels to protect someone's honour. It's made me want to go back to Romania and find out more about this amazing author and his old ancestral home (which was burnt to the ground by the retreating Germans at the end of the Second World War, but has since been rebuilt.) He describes Transylvania so beautifully. These books are ultimately a love story to his old lost lands and a world which vanished for ever in his life time.
