132,602
edits
Changes
An Exclusive Love by Johanna Adorjan (view source)
Revision as of 14:04, 2 March 2012
, 14:04, 2 March 2012no edit summary
|summary=A young woman who seeks to unravel the mysteries of her grandparents' tragic decision; a tale of memory, belonging and devotion.
}}
This moving memoir tells of the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form of Stephen) and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in October. The story is told by their granddaughter, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956. It ends with the police reports of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies in their bungalow in the Charlottenlund, a Danish town of the Capital Region of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fateful, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorable.
The narrative is partly imaginary, in relation to the final day itself, but real in most other aspects; Adorján has her own strong feelings and reminiscences about her cherished paternal grandparents, but it chronicles the heart-rending and dark times through which they lived before she was born. A cosmopolitan couple, there are tender accounts of friends and places that the family visited from the USA to Israel and Korea. For instance, she describes how in 1949 her grandparents met the elegant French lady Hélène, a psychotherapist, and her endocrinologist husband, another medical couple at a conference for Communist doctors in Budapest and then how István, an orthopaedic surgeon returned to Paris with her fretting grandmother as translator. This meant leaving Adorján's father, now a prominent musician, his name features on many classical Cds, and her aunt behind in the care of a nursemaid. These two were most unfortunately about to be stricken with polio.