The Door (NYRB Classics)

Beautifully crafted.grabs you by the guts.A book you dont want to end.pity you cannot read Hungarian,though translation,excellent.A true experience.Rushed to buy it for my family,to share my deep emotional experience.

This book describes the love a woman feels for her housekeeper or rather her desire to have the housekeeper love her. I remain puzzled about why that was so important to the narrator. The housekeeper was a fiercely independent person who guarded her privacy and image. The book examine the very nature of what is really love and what is merely selfishness.

Within minutes of starting to read this novel, I was reminded of the style of writing found in the 18th and 19th century classics of Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen. This is not an action-packed novel, nothing of great event happens, and yet through the quality of Szabo's writing, her well-plotted characters, and its historical setting, it becomes a thrilling suspense story. The two principal protagonists are both flawed, imperfect, complicated women, they are constantly at loggerheads, each convinced of the rightness of their position in society, and it is through their character development that Szabo reveals her acute grasp of human nature and psychology. So skillful is Szabo's portrayal of these two women that the reader finds both their hard-headed positions equally vindicated by subsequent events. It is also a historical novel exploring class consciousness and gender politics under communist rule in Hungary, and yet, despite the backdrop of a harsh political reality, it remains a novel of manners and society where eternal values of friendship, love, loyalty and responsibility prevail. Surprisingly, it is the juxtaposition of these two women with a third principal 'character', a dog, wherein these values are revealed most strongly.

It is beautifully written and the characters resonate as true. She has tackled an important universal theme: the fact that we all have a part of ourselves behind a locked door. There may be wonderful things there like her courage in helping a jewish family at the cost of possibly being killed, as well as things that she is ashamed of such as her need to be cared for like a baby (this is symbolized by ther stroke). The cats and her dog are the only witnesses she allow behind that door. They too are dependent like her. A universal wish to be understood without words as we are as infant with a good enough mother, is shown by the dog who understands everything. We all meet people on our porch in front of the locked door.

I finished this tale of the relationship between two women with very little empathy for either Emerence or the writer. I was at times flabbergasted by the misinterpretation of actions and emotions of both Emerence and the writer.

I finished this tale of the relationship between two women with very little empathy for either Emerence or the writer. I was at times flabbergasted by the misinterpretation of actions and emotions of both Emerence and the writer.

Complex relationships betgween two wome in Hungary. I do nogt understand illusions to country's recent history (except it changedf from communism and censorship to somethng else). Kind of like Ferrante with East European darkness.

Simply stunning. One of the best books I've read. I'll hold it close to me for years to come. A sharp, poignant, incredibly rendered work that details the relationship between two women, and the larger forces at work for all of us. As a psychoanalyst, I could not help but think that this book represents our work--the deep work, the hard work. Highly, highly recommend this one.

As the communist bonds around Hungary loosen, an artist is given room to breathe, enjoy the fruits of successful expression and partake in the bourgeois benefits of domestic help.

The unnamed writer who narrates Magda Szabo's "The Door" hires Emerence the housekeeper almost sight unseen. "I didn't know then that the only time I would ever see her without a headscarf would be on her deathbed. Until that moment arrived she always went about veiled."

Emerence immediately clouds the question of who is interviewing whom. "If she didn't warm to us, no amount of money would induce her to accept the job."

Emerence deigns to accept employment but on her own terms, setting her own hours, defining her own job parameters. Then she sets about awing the writer and her husband. "The old woman worked like a robot. She lifted unliftable furniture without the slightest regard for herself. There was something superhuman, almost alarming, in her physical strength and her capacity for work."

In her off hours, Emerence locks herself away in her flat, behind shuttered windows and a door that does not budge for company. The town abounds with rumors about what she's hiding in there: a dead body, imprisoned animals, loot plundered from the Jews carted off during the war?

"For many years we mattered very little to her," the writer says. "This changed suddenly, when my husband became ill." Emerence scolds the writer for shutting her out of the family crisis, "like a stranger." Despite her hermetic boundaries, Emerence is obsessively charitable, playing brusque angel of mercy to the community, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, adopting the strays. Just don't come knocking on her door.

"Emerence didn't know the words of St. Paul, but she lived them." Although she practices Christian charity, she certainly doesn't count herself among the Christians. Emerence caustically mocks and maligns the writer's religious observances. The narrator muses about the risk Emerence is taking of "a bolt from above to strike her dead," and shortly afterward, she learns that Emerence is a childhood survivor of one of God's fiery volleys, most of her family exterminated in a quick succession of tragedies.

Such personal revelations combine with the husband's sickness to bring the women closer, though Emerence remains prickly and manically unpredictable. When she's not castigating her employers for their high-falutin' faults, Emerence expresses her affection for the couple through deposits of gifts, eccentric knickknacks and geegaws, some of practical use, some pure clutter. At first, the writer is touched by Emerence's outpouring, though her husband would prefer his study unsullied by garage sale garden gnomes. When the writer tries to draw the line at a particularly tacky item and explain to Emerence the distinction between objets d'art and kitsch, Emerence explodes into one of her frequent, apocalyptic rages, pouring scorn over the author's ideas of art.

Unwittingly echoing the Italian neorealists or predating the Danes of Dogme, Emerence insists that if the writer and her contemporaries were truly creating art, "then everything would be real. ... You're all clowns, and more contemptible than clowns. You're worse than con men."

Emerence is not unintelligent, but she's willfully ignorant of what some might call the higher pursuits of the mind. "In her eyes, any work that didn't involve bodily strength and use of the hands was loafing, little better than a conjuring trick." She holds little regard for literature or philosophy. "Writing was an occupation comparable with play. The child took it seriously, and carried it out with great care ... though it was only play, and nothing depended on it." How does a person who lives through the written word communicate with a person who rejects it? "She glanced at our books for only as long as it took to dust them. ... The decades of her life in Hungary had exposed her only to the rhetoric she so hated, and which had drained away any interest she might have had in poetry. By the time she might have heard something different, she had lost the desire to enrich her mind."

Politics, the poisoner of poetry. Emerence reserves her most vehement contempt for the political, and here I'm in complete agreement with her. Politics is best restricted to those naïve enough to swill that Kool-Aid and those amoral enough to prey upon the first group. On a deserted island somewhere far away...

Like most writers who would find such a character dropped in their laps, the narrator tries to penetrate Emerence's irascibility to discover what lies beyond her figurative and literal doors. "Somewhere in her past" is the key to Emerence.

I imagine if I put in the effort, I could probably tie the events and characters of "The Door" to all kinds of allegorical parallels drawn from Hungary's history of oppression under the far right, then under the far left. I'd best leave that to the scholars and trust they're not just making stuff up.

I don't feel like I'm female or Hungarian enough to delve into this book as far as it might have needed. Perhaps it's one of the shortcomings (no pun intended, believe me!) of reading with a penis, but I didn't understand the stakes of the power struggle between Emerence and the narrator, why the women inspire such fierce emotions within each other and what keeps them so inextricably tied. They come to the point of frothing fits over matters such as whom the dog likes better and the aesthetic qualities of junkyard treasures. Really? This is worth screaming about? I found myself identifying with the writer's reserved husband: You two go squawk it out someplace else. Just don't touch my bookshelves. That might make me a myopic American philistine. I've played worse roles, I suppose.

The writer venerates Emerence as "pure and incorruptible, the better self that each and every one of us aspired to be." Yet Emerence is frequently cruel and biting and vindictive, the kind of person who flogs dumb animals when they displease her. The writer professes love and devotion, yet she deserts Emerence during an emergency, so she can shill her book on TV. And apparently, Emerence is the only housekeeper in all of Hungary, for when she goes off in one of her periodic huffs, everything is thrown into crisis and chaos. I'm a spoiled, capitalist swine, and I've been cleaning up after myself (sort of) since I was about 4.

Perhaps this all makes sense on some deeper symbolic level that I'm not privy to. I assume there's more to this story than two stubborn, petty, irrational women selfishly trying to impose their wills on each other. Maybe not. Whatever might lie beyond the surface of "The Door," it evaded me.

This book written in 1987 by a Hungarian writer showed up on a list of the best books of 2015 (since it was just then translated into English) and it sounded too good not to read......and so different from the books on my night stand right now. It's about a complex love between two very different women in Budapest, sort of a timeless story that could have been set anywhere. I finished it the day I found out I lost a lifelong friend (4 days ago), so writing this now is rather difficult because my relationship with this (childhood into adulthood) girlfriend was also very complex as we grew into very different people. I highly recommend this book.....and may try to write more at a later date.

This is one of the best books ever written. Against the backdrop of the first half of the 20th century it explores a relationship between two women that can not be easily categorized. On the surface the relationship is between a professional writer and her housekeeper, but as the story progresses it becomes more complex than that - in surprising ways the emotional struggles between the two characters suggest mother-daughter, parent-child dynamics that resonate deep and deal with issues such as personal privacy, guilt and dying The power of Szabo's writing pulled me in to the narrative immediately and I was not able to put it down..

Excellent story I loved how it was written. You were given the story little by little in a way that was very organic. I loved that it was not merely chronological but told through the relationship btwn the two women.

Not completely done, but can't resist posting while I am in here - I LOVE this book. So much so, that I ordered a second by the same author so I could dive right in after I've closed The Door (sorry, couldn't resist)!

I read A LOT and it has been such a very long time since I've encountered such an intriguing plot, involving such complicated, fun, interesting characters. It doesn't hurt that the writing is concise, yet evocative or that the author's timing and imagination takes the experience to another level.

I am happy that someone took the initiative to translate Ms. Szabos' works for more to enjoy, although I may have to learn Hungarian so I can translate the remainder - yes, I am one happy reader!

The novel captured me from the start. The author achieved incredible feats: awesome writing style, as I yearned to know more and more, like an addict of not letting go even though in the beginning I wanted to, but something kept tugging me to keep going; built in mystery I wanted to know how the author will solve, yet not solved and not all at the same time.The novel got better and better as I journeyed through the story. I procrastinated finishing the book because I did not want it to end. Wish I could read in native language, Hungarian; so, a lot of credit goes to the translator who did an incredible job. This was a stimulating read .... a page turner.