Katalin Street – Magda Szabo

The book-packing journey reaches Eastern Europe in the shape of Hungary.

Specifically at Katalin Street, Budapest, to follow the lives of three families who live in adjacent houses there. The properties are substantial with views out onto the Danube, and the residents are solidly middle class.

Mr Elekes is a headteacher with a wife and two daughters, Iren and Blanka. Next door but one are widower Major Biro, live-in housekeeper Mrs Temes, and the major’s son Balent, who is a little older than the girls. In the middle house, newly arrived, are Mr Held, a dentist, with his wife and daughter, Henriette, the youngest of the children. The Helds are Jewish, and this is 1934 …

After an extended preface that meanders enigmatically through time and space, the narrative unfolds in half a dozen chronological snapshots from 1934 to 1968. Some are told in the first person by Iren. The others are narrated in the third person from Henriette’s point of view that unnervingly persists beyond her early death in the upheavals of 1944.

For Budapest, the upheavals continue into the post war communist state and the false dawn of 1956. Such events form an unintrusive context to the story, the emphasis being on how they affect the residents of Katalin Street.

The spare prose quickly draws the reader into (mainly) the children’s lives – as children initially then as they grow older into adulthood. Throughout, the relationships among them – based on love, rivalry, jealousy, loyalty, and guilt – are particularly well drawn. There is enough forward shadowing to intrigue, and plenty of dramatic incidents to excite, before an end that is not so much a resolution as a coming to rest.

Once into the narrative, the book becomes an engrossing read.