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Revision as of 14:05, 2 March 2012
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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 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, CDs - and her aunt behind in the care of a nursemaid. These two were most unfortunately about to be stricken with polio.
This incident points up two striking features about ''An Exclusive Love'' in general. Firstly, Johanna Adorján's magical powers of description. She notes,'' Hélène lives in a small neo-classical building that looks as if it had been under a preservation order for at least a hundred years. Wherever you look you see ornamental furniture, floral decoration, porcelain plates- the wallpaper is silk, the cupboards old and decorated with intarsia work.'' She is as good on people as places; ''Hélène talks fast and at length, and laughs loudest of all at herself. She wears an elegant blouse, snakeskin shoes with bows on them, and her lipstick doesn't vanish into thin air until just before the last course. I can see why my grandmother liked her.'' Secondly, the thought-provoking, tentative style with which she makes her commentary is the written equivalent of an evocative pencil sketch. She wonders if her questioning is discourteous, ponders motives and characteristics and detail. In exactly which arrondissiment did her grandparents have their apartment? In places the sparse style, the book is only 186 pages, resembles a prose poem.
