Leeuwerik

by Dezso Kosztolanyi

Other authorsHenry Kammer

Paper Book, 2012

Status

Available

Call number

2.kosztolanyi

Genres

Fiction

Publication

Amsterdam Van Gennep 2012

User reviews

LibraryThing member JimmyChanga

Skylark is a woman in her mid-30's, an "old maid", living with her mother and father. They've fallen into such a groove that they have become pathetically dependent on each other. Skylark is also butt ugly, which has given her family much shame in not being able to marry her off. They still save up

for her dowry, but try not to harbor any hope for her marrying off, as they have been disappointed many times before.In the beginning of the book, Skylark leaves for a week to go visit a relative. We do not see any more of her until the last chapter, when she returns. However, her presence is felt in her absence: we see just how this family is tied together, and how easily it falls apart; mother and father seem not to live but to be carried along by their re-enforced beliefs and daily patterns. For a while, Skylark almost seems like the parent here, and mother and father are like the kids who are cautiously experimenting with 1. eating out 2. going to the theater 3. talking with their friends who they have not talked to since they have isolated themselves in their own self sufficient home 4. partying and drinking 5. playing the piano 6. getting drunk 7. gamblingOf course, even while having fun, they deny that it is fun or good. These are people who, when faced with a problem, try to look the other way. Out of sight, out of mind. They will not talk about any of their problems directly. But you really feel for them, they are so pathetic, and so sad, but wanting happiness desperately.The rest of the town is not any better. They cavort and get drunk and gamble every Thursday night and don't retire until Friday night. You could see why the family withdrew to themselves after awhile. The writing is simple and elegant, and didn't feel heavy. I loved the chapter titles, especially the last one: "XIII: in which, on the eighth of September 1899, the novel is concluded, without coming to an end" and it's true. Things will probably go on as they always have.

Show Less

11 more

LibraryThing member Carlie

Set in the provincial town of Sárszeg, Hungary in 1899, this adventure novel follows the lives of an elderly couple who find their true selves when their daughter visits relatives for one week in autumn. They have never been apart from their homely daughter, Skylark, for this length of time. At

first, they are not sure what to do with themselves. Soon, however, they are wining and dining with the bigwigs in the Sárszeg social circles, going to the theatre, eating at restaurants, and partaking in parties and merry-making that they have not known in years.

After a couple of days without their daughter, they come to an atrocious realization, something that haunts their psyches. The father especially is sensitive to the awareness that Skylark is a burden. This week without her makes both parents question the character of their lives and who they could be if ugly Skylark was married and they were empty-nesters. They are stifled by Skylark's presence and personality.

As the days go by and Skylark's imminent return nears, their suppressed emotions erupt after the father returns home intoxicated late at night after an episode of drinking and card-playing. He tells the mother about his feelings toward their daughter. The mother is incredulous but secretly wonders about her life without her daughter. The next day, they are set to meet Skylark at the train station but the train is long-delayed. They fret and worry about her safety and whereabouts. When the train finally arrives, they are grateful and overwhelmed with emotion. Regardless of what could have been, they are happily resigned to return to their bland, predictable lives with their daughter.

Looking to read a European novel for a change of pace, I was pleased with my choice from the get-go. I loved the adventure format and the momentum. I was enamored with the writing. Kosztolányi has a knack for describing mundane happenings and finding their heart and importance. It is the little things in life that often turn out to be the biggest deals. His descriptions of provincial Austro-Hungarian life are an insightful snapshot of history.

Show Less

LibraryThing member cbl_tn

“You wouldn't like it, it tastes like coconut” is what I always tell my diabetic father whenever I indulge in a sugary dessert in his presence. We both know that's not true. However, I know he doesn't want me to give up something I enjoy because he can't enjoy it, too.

The Vajkays don't live

like that. For years, Mother and Father Vajkays have denied themselves things they enjoy out of sensitivity for their daughter, Skylark, a spinster of uncertain age. They live with the fiction that they don't enjoy those activities, and they speak disparagingly of those who do. When Skylark goes away for a week's visit with relatives in the country, her parents tentatively rediscover the delights of things they'd given up for years, and they confront some unspoken truths. The ordered lives they lead with Skylark stand out against those of other inhabitants of the town who indulge their passions with abandon.

Nothing of great consequence happens in this short novel. The action is mostly internal. Even the minor characters are interesting. While on the surface this is a lighthearted novel and there are several humorous scenes, the underlying mood is one of melancholy, disappointment, and resignation, with a tinge of apathy. The main weakness of the book is that the author leans a little too much toward “telling” rather than “showing”.

My edition tells me that two of the author's other works are available in English translation. I've now added two more TBRs to my mushrooming list. Recommended warmly, especially to readers of literature in translation.

Show Less

LibraryThing member meggyweg

A sort of slice-of-life novel about a middle-aged couple and their grown daughter in a dull Hungarian provincial town at around 1900. The couple has always depended on their daughter, Skylark, to be there and run things and take care of them, and they're at a bit of a loss after Skylark goes to

visit relatives for a week. But they actually become a lot more outgoing in her absence, meeting old friends, going to the theater, etc. However, once Skylark comes back you get the impression that things are just going to return to the way they were.

This wasn't my kind of book, but it wasn't bad. The author did a good job of setting the atmosphere -- a sense of dull gray hopelessness pervaded every scene. However, I was puzzled by one particular detail: weight. The father in the story visibly gained weight, then lost it and returned to being gaunt by the end of the book. Skylark, when she came back from vacation, had also become noticeably fatter. That ain't gonna happen in a week. I suppose probably the weight gains/losses are a metaphor for something else, but since the rest of the book was strictly realistic fiction, this obviously impossible detail was jarring.

Show Less

LibraryThing member alwright1

We'll be traveling to Hungary soon and this book is one of the few available in translation here by a popular Hungarian writer of the early 20th century, Dezső Kosztolányi.

So first I'll say that the writing was very enjoyable, that I came to really like characters that I thought at the beginning

would bore me to tears the whole book, and that the book can be incredibly funny at times. But, by God, this book was depressing to me. At the end I wanted to scream "Affect change! All of your lives could be so much better! So much more!" Silly American that I am.

So there is a small family. An "ugly" daughter--a spinster at 35, and her two adoring parents. She maintains the house and their lives. The parents adore her. She is to go on a short trip to the country. They are all devastated. What in the world will they do for the whole week? The answer turns out to be, have a freakin life. So they get dragged back into their social connections and personal interests and have a delightful week. She spends a week in the country not getting the husband and family that she so desperately wants or enjoying the company of her extended family, and then she comes back. They go back to being shut-ins with bland food instead of awesome goulash and palinka parties.

According to the introduction, Kosztolányi found it pretty much impossible to write about anything but the fact that we are dying. The examples of personal suffering are poignant, no one in the book is NOT suffering the daughter's fate as all of their hearts break along with hers. But myself, free from the 20th-century Magyar's baggage and saddled with my own American millennial mindset was so angry at them for not doing something to make things better. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want or expect her to get a makeover or marriage prospects. (I would have been way more angry at the end.) I just want them to do something to make their lives better instead of suffering so much, but I guess, realistically or fatalistically, that's generally not how life is.

PS - We are all dying. Thanks, Kosztolányi.

Show Less

LibraryThing member thornton37814

35-year-old "old maid" Skylark lives with her parents in a fictional Serbian town in what was at that time Hungary. Relatives living on the plain have repeatedly invited the family to come visit. When the end of the summer approaches and the family has not made the trip, they decide to send Skylark

alone for the visit. Mother and father wonder what they will do to pass the time as they await Skylark's return, but they soon rediscover the lives they used to have before giving them up to try to keep their "ugly" daughter Skylark happy. This is a novel which portrays daily life rather than one in which there is a major crisis or event. The characters are wonderful. The descriptions are vivid. The model for the town in the novel is the author's own Subotica, which is located in present-day Serbia.

Show Less

LibraryThing member TheBookJunky

A one day read, a little over 200 pages. Translated from the Hungarian. The author lived 1885 to 1936. Takes place in 1899. An old couple’s old maid of a daughter goes away for a week, to visit family. The old couple, at first bereft at the absence of their unexciting and uninteresting daughter,

soon surprise themselves by discovering a social world outside of their reclusive home. They rediscover old friends, restaurants, the theatre. It is a comic novel — his descriptions of the daughter in particular are cutting, yet all done in a style of “I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em” A gently comic novel, with unerringly accurate and insightful descriptions of motives, relationships. Best of all were his descriptions of the ugly old maid daughter of the old couple.

Show Less

LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind

A silhouette of life in early 20th-century Hungary. People are carried along by what they do. Kosz has tender and precise prose.

LibraryThing member gitavreddy

The title makes one think of beautiful creatures but the book is about a spinster and her parents. The spinster, Skylark, is ugly and has not managed to catch a husband. Her disappointment, and her parents', is hidden from each other by the life they create for themselves.

The book is funny,

insightful, and poignant. Parents hurt when their children do, don't they? And a child suffers when the parents are disappointed. This tug between parents and child is beautifully depicted in the book, and the unexpected end could leave you misty-eyed.

Show Less

LibraryThing member starbox

"So many tears. In all the world she had never thought there could be so many tears", 2 April 2016

This review is from: Skylark (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
The novel opens with a family preparing for their daughter going away to stay with relatives. It's only for a week, but as the

train departs, Mother and Father 'could already feel their loneliness. Swelling painfully, it hovered around them in the silence.' They are saddened too by the unspoken knowledge of their daughter's ugliness, the fact that she will never marry.
This novel focuses not on Skylark's holiday but on the week her parents spend. The family usually live quietly, economically. Their daughter does the cooking - good, plain food. But how will things go when they must manage alone?
Enjoyable, comic in places but very sad too.

Show Less

LibraryThing member arubabookwoman

Mother and Father live in a small provincial Hungarian town, and have devoted their lives to their daughter Skylark. Hope springs eternal that a husband will be found for Skylark, but there is no getting around that fact that she is plain, perhaps ugly is not too harsh a description.
Toward the end

of one summer at the turn of the century, Skylark goes away to visit relatives for a week. During Skylark's week away, Mother and Father start enjoying life again, living it up, eating in restaurants, going to the theater. Will the changes they make prevail after Skylark returns?
This is a delightful book, but also a bittersweet book, funny and sad at the same time. We had a great discussion on Litsy. I have 2 more books by Kosztolanyi on my shelf, and hope to get to them soon.

Highly recommended.
4 stars

Show Less

LibraryThing member icolford

This compact, subtly playful novel by Hungarian critic and poet Dezső Kosztolányi (1885-1936) chronicles the uneventful lives of the Vajkay family, who reside in a parochial outpost called Sárszeg, somewhere within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We meet Akos Vajkay and his wife (the

narrator usually refers to them as Mother and Father) as the 19th Century is winding down. It’s September 1, and they are packing because their daughter, nicknamed Skylark (we never learn her real name), is leaving for a week to visit her aunt and uncle in Tarkö, on the Hungarian plain. Akos is retired and spends his days researching heraldry and lineages. His wife keeps house. But it seems the presiding force within the Vajkay home is Skylark, who, at thirty-five, unattached with no prospects, well versed in household chores, is both a hopeless burden and a constant focus of doting attention for her parents. Once Skylark has left them standing on the station platform, “waving their little handkerchiefs” as her train recedes from view, the parents are bereft. Skylark too, on board the train, unaccustomed to being on her own without distractions, succumbs to the loneliness and despair that constantly plagues her. But it turns out all is not lost. In their daughter’s absence, Akos and his wife are free to do as they please. They dine out at the best restaurant in town. They attend the theatre. Akos reconnects with a jolly crowd of revelers called the Panthers, with whom he used to socialize but withdrew from after marrying and becoming a father. His wife also enjoys the week emancipated from the daughter’s sobering presence, neglecting the housework, eating chocolate, and playing the piano, which we are told she hasn’t touched in many years. Akos had renounced alcohol and gambling but, encouraged by his friends to throw off the shackles of sobriety, he again takes up the bottle and the cards, and in the small hours of Friday morning returns home uproariously drunk with his winnings overflowing his pockets. It is then, while in the throes of inebriation, that Akos voices to his wife the grim truth of which they are painfully aware but have avoided facing: that their daughter is irredeemably ugly and will never find a husband. For Skylark too, after a good cry on the train, the week is pleasing. Every day is full. In a letter sent while on holiday she regales her parents with a litany of the activities she and her relatives have got up to. Then the week is over. Skylark returns home. Her parents are genuinely ecstatic and relieved to have her back where she belongs, safe in the nest. Life for the Vajkay family returns to normal. It is perhaps a cloistered, unremarkable life, buttoned-down and filled with familiar ritual, in some respects disappointing, but comfortable. The ironies here are subtle, the humour subdued. Kosztolányi never mocks his characters, who take their amusements where they can find them. He simply lets them be. In Skylark, Kosztolányi is sketching a way of life that is neither tragic nor triumphant and in so doing has written a moving and memorable novel.

Show Less

Fewer