Historical, fantastical fiction about the 1956 revolution in Hungary, and it has absolutely everything. It’s Jewish. It’s queer (gay, bi, poly). It’s a good adventure and it’s written so sensually that it’s also more than that. And it’s HELLA well-researched.
That’s what impressed me the most, I think. It’s not just that the author got her facts straight (which I’d appreciate in itself, of course), and then used the historical moments she embedded in the story super well to play with the story. It’s not just the obvious respect she has for the complexity of the situation and the big fucked up tangle of history that produced the situation.
It’s the vibes. Budapest as a city where there are no colours left after the war? The depth of despair and trauma of families decimated in the colocaust, and then only further hurt and murdered in Stalinist purges? The mistrust, the hunched shoulders, the checking-who-is-in-the-room, the police, the dread, the greyness of it all. The grief. The life with despair for decades for all of them, and embedded in the context of millennia for the Jewish protagonist and her family. It’s bang on.
As are the local vibes. The marches. The bridges. The river, oh, the river that is nearly a protagonist. The angel of death. The pathos is getting a bit much in places even for me, and will be worse for … probably everybody else? I can think of like two people who might like this book as much as I did. But man. Not five stars because I reserve that rating for life-changing stuff, and also because I’m not convinced that some of the plot (the golem) was necessary, and because of a fair bit of black-and-white despite the author’s best intention. But still, great stuff.
Oh also, the Author’s Note at the end not only explains why she wrote the book, and that her first contact with (or rather first time in) Hungary was in 2018 and fell head-first into a research hole, no: She also acknowledges how the revolution is nowadays used for propaganda, and how antisemitism was and is present on all sides. And then she provides a bibliography. My standards for author research have been raised and I’ll feel more justified in grumping about badly researched books from here on out.
Plot summary
Beware: full spoilers! Also probably incomplete and possibly incomprehensible.
Budapest, 1956.
Csilla dreams of the Duna in mystical ways. She’s Jewish, but her parents kept her away from much of their religion, including Yiddish, and then were murdered in the early 50s in one of the Stalinist purges. She now lives with her aunt, and the two are planning to escape Hungary via Belgrade. Her father’s name was recently cleared, and yet, she finds herself watched by the secret police.
Oh, and also, all colours have drained from the city/country during the war. Everything is sepia. People are starting to forget what colours really look like, e.g. imagining stars as red despite knowing it’s wrong because of the communist star etc.
Csilla finds her father’s journals, where he writes about how they escaped via the river, magically, where it protected them for months, which Csilla has suppressed. And about the man he loved, Szendrey. And how he tried and failed to build a golem in Prague.
People keep disappearing and Csilla is roped into figuring out what happened to a friend of a friend, and finds herself in danger, but also with unexpected allies.
She throws the journals back into the river. Then, the river turns black and suddenly is quiet, doesn’t talk to her anymore, and is covered in stone. The journals appear back at her door. And she meets Azriel, who she knew as Nati, who died with all of her family. Azriel is our other POV character, an angel of death – death of children, to be specific. He’s been urgently recalled to Budapest because something big is about to happen (yup, it’s the revolution).
We also get some more backstory: The day Csilla was born, the river burst its banks, and the water turned silver. And when her mother’s water broke, it was silver too. Her father loved the river – believed in it the way her mother believed in God. When she touches Azriel, she stops hearing the river.
Aaaand the revolution kicks off, Csilla and her best friend right there. They are both typist girls and end up typing the declarations and demands. Csilla doesn’t want to leave anymore. And when the big moment comes – when the millions march and they cut the centre out of the Hungarian flag, they can see the actual blue sky through the hole. Ooof. People rediscover their own hair colours. Everything. Csilla and Zsu were four when the colours left (though Csilla’s hair will always be silver). Tamás and Csilla are somewhat-basically-nearly dating, and the danger they are in accelerates everything. And Azriel always there. Aand then the three become an item and it’s beautiful. She with the river in her bones, Tamásh with the city in his, and Azriel with the dead.
But things of course also sour. Zsu’s fiancé worked for the police and is killed by a mob. Blue returns for good. Csilla tries to anticipate where things will escalate by checking where Azriel feels drawn, while Tamás is committed to the revolution.
Csilla decides to make a golem herself, with river water and muck from the bottom of the river. She succeeds, and the golem fights with them against the Soviets, until they leave. The colours return. Csilla kills the golem, as she should, before it gets corrupted. Everything is good. Seven beautiful days of happiness. Only Azriel is uneasy, wondering why he isn’t pulled to another place. Then the Soviets return. It ends with Csilla’s aunt fleeing after Csilla insisted. It ends with the three of them kissing and stepping out in the street when the tanks approach. It ends with the river rising, and then: The End.
