The Door by Magda Szabo (1987)

The fraught 20-year relationship between an older woman and a younger one.

Book Review: The Door is the book for those who enjoy getting punched in the gut. I only find a couple books a year with that effect. This is the powerfully affecting story of two women, the strained relationship between a novelist and her cleaner (wow, that description does not do it justice). The women are opposites, the writer young, modern, educated, religious, artistic, while the domestic is old, rooted in the past, almost illiterate, impious, straightforward, immune to pretense. The center of the novel is the house cleaner, Emerence, who is difficult, mercurial, wholly independent, unpredictable, elemental, almost mythic, strong as an oak tree. The women form a tempestuous bond, neither willing to give in or appear weak (reminiscent of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend). Both women are proud, refusing to show vulnerability, and both can fly into sudden rages for little apparent reason (or perhaps that's a Hungarian stereotype). There are elements of The Door that seem distinctly Hungarian and outside my experience, but unlike some novels of this type the reader is not immersed wholly in an exotic ethnic and cultural world. The narrator, a woman whose biography is much like that of Szabó herself (named Magda, a writer prevented from publishing, married and childless), could be any modern European. This was my first book by noted Hungarian author Magda Szabó (1917-2007), who now has five novels published by NYRB. It took me a few pages to get into Szabó's rhythm, but then the story flowed effortlessly. Although in The Door Magda is the one who is church-going and a novelist, arguably Emerence is the more religious, the better Christian, the greater artist in her appreciation of the world, and the story digs into her history, which is essentially the arc of the whole novel as presented through Magda's memories. The novel can be appreciated and enjoyed solely on a level of human interaction between the women, Emerence and Magda can also be read as the contrast between the past and future. Emerence as the history of Hungary, as the past all crumbles (literally) in the end. There is much of history: the Second World War (Hungary was an Axis country), the subsequent Communist repression, the easing of the Iron Curtain. At times the story is mythic, or with a touch of magical realism, and even an ironic sense of humor. At times the story reminded me of Elena Ferrante and My Brilliant Friend (which here too leaves one wondering which is the brilliant friend). The Door has a refreshing maturity (much like Ferrante), or at least lacks the self-indulgence that I find present in much English language literature.  [5★]