This book is really superb, and makes an excellent case for how tragically overlooked Hungarian literature is. Think of it as a Hungarian answer to Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body. In that book, the identity and gender of the narrator fade into insignificance so that the focus can be entirely on love itself. Here, the narrator reminds fixed, but the beloved remains something of an amorphous blur, ambiguously slipping through different people in a non-linear chronology throughout 20th century Hungarian history. Esterhazy brilliantly uses sex and love as a metaphor for Hungarian politics and national identity (hardly a new trick for him) and vice versa. Thus, the book is not only an exquisite encyclopedia of love but an implicit meditation on Hungarian history. I first read this book sitting by the Danube with a bottle of bikave'r, but you don't have to be conversant at all in Hungarian history to get a ton out of this book. And it just might make you interested in Hungary as a side-effect.

There is nothing earth-shattering about this novel except the unusual clarity of Kosztolányi's descriptive powers. More so than the novel Anna Édes, however, Skylark puts a burden of thought onto the reader. Kosztolányi only narrates, offering no judgements or opinions, and so his narration is very focused. The translation preserves this and is generally praiseworthy; Kosztolányi's characteristic terse, direct style and colorful phrasing come through unscathed.

This edition has a nice 10 page introduction by Péter Esterházy, which gives interesting information about the author as well as some background information about Hungarian literature. The cover and binding are, in my opinion, quite handsome also.

I generally agree with what the previous reviewer has stated, although I found this short novel (as well as Anna Edes) brilliant and almost totally flawless. A book which I didn't want to finish simply because I truly enjoyed the experience of reading it.

This book explores the narrator's mother's death - the second half being narrated by the dead mother. Interspered between the narrative segments are quotations from a wide variety of literary sources. In the narrative segments, especially those of the mother, dreams and "reality" are intertwined. The book deserves multiple readings to fully appreciate its content but is certainly enjoyable as a single read.

Note: since there is no description of the book this is translated from Hungarian and is part of a larger work.

As a Hungarian-American, I was puzzled by this book. It attempts to show the tenor of life under Janos Kadar, who served as Magyar leader from 1956 until the fall of Soviet Communism in the late 1980s. Kadar walked a delicate tightrope between pleasing Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev -- and pleasing his people. Esterhazy depicts this period as an era of pornography: One appears willing to enjoy like the nubile beauties in a porno movie, but in reality one is appalled by the fact that one is being used.

The difficulty with a long extended metaphor is either that it breaks out of its shell and goes somewhere; or, in this case, it just spirals around and sputters out inconclusively.

At times, Esterhazy sounds like a Hungarian William Burroughs in THE NOVA EXPRESS. I would be curious to see how the original reads in Hungarian, because the rendition into English seems to always be just a bit unidiomatic. There are numerous English slang phrases that make it look as if the translator has a tin ear.

The only reason I rated this book a 3 is that every once in a while, it seems right on target, especially in the opening section. But, as in any book that contains no characters and no story, it slips out again. The Section entitled simply "?" seems particularly endless and painful, with its endless interrogatories.

The book is a part of a longer novel, it`s a pitty that the rest is not translated. It focuses on the discourse of sexuality and in the same time the communist rule in Hungary. I like it very much since it can speak about sex and communist mass murder in witty brilliant language! It is clear that what is at stake is not history, politics or private life but the style itself.

This was the second of Esterhazy's books I read- the first being "A little Hungarian Pornography. (KMP)" I approached this book with great interest, not because I liked KMP but because Hrabal is one of my favorite writers. I am unclear how Esterhazy intends this as a homage to him.

Esterhazy's style is curt and doesn't flow. It appears he is trying to do some James Joyce/Jose Saramago thing, but badly- which is pretty much par for the course as his other books are written in the same style.

This is especially ironic, as Bohumil Hrabal is above all a storyteller. Hrabal's style and content are as different from Esterhazy as moon from sun. My greatest concern with the book (which I find merely annoying), and in fact the reason I am writing this review, is that I would find it a great tragedy if anyone steered celar of Hrabal after reading this pathetic attempt to cop some glory off of his name. Scrap this book and get a copy of "I served the King of England" or "Ostre Stredovany Vlaky."

First off, Esterhazy is obviously not Hrabal the Storyteller, nor is he intending to be a Hrabal the Storyteller. In fact, he writes of a frustrated, blocked writer who is miserably *failing* to write a book celebrating Hrabal. It's a cosmic joke on mimicry; a book that ends with a jazz-loving God picking up a saxophone for the first time and letting out a horrific blurt of a note that resounds across the world.

Throughout Esterhazy's characteristically chaotic mono/dia/tria/etc.logues there are lovely, alchemic moments: "you probably know what a Hungarian sentence is like...with not a structure in sight, or a decent relative pronoun, the words all lumped together, and yet...A Hungarian sentence is this `and yet'. You have to start from scratch every time. It's as little civilized as the heart." Here, to generalize, you have a summary description of Esterhazy's own prose.

Another shining verbal moment:

"Masturbation which -- though it may never get you anywhere, nevertheless creates a universal space-time, the genesis of all creation; it is not rhythm, but throbbing!" E. loves to take the bodily(uncouth by Western standards) and mix it in with some dabs of theory. And honestly, reading *The Book of Hrabal* is *throbbing*. Largely due to my accidental run-in with this book I, a woman of no Eastern European descent, am currently learning Hungarian and pursuing graduate studies in Hungarian Literature. That should speak for itself.

The first 40-50 pages made me almost stop because I was so put off by the 'style' of the writing. But I kind of understand what reviewers mean by how the book uses its own 'language' to get a sense of the danube's 'life force' for lack of a better description. Not an easy read for a casual reader like myself. You have to be open to something different before this book can have any effect on you or else you're better off skipping it.

After reading ... Richard Teleky's essay collection, "Hungarian Rhapsodies," I had dismissed in that review his article on Esterhazy and admitted that I felt no attraction to Esterhazy's watered-down postmodernism in spite of Teleky's attempts to arouse Western readers' interest in this writer so admired by Hungarian critics. Now, knowing that translation and my own ignorance may have prejudiced me, I decided to give Esterhazy his own chance to win me over as a reader. Maybe I was wrong and Teleky was right?

I vowed to approach this book optimistically. I thought this imaginary travelogue could appeal; I figured it'd serve as an appetizer for the main course, the meatier and even denser non-fictional account of a second journey down the same river that Claudio Magris serves up as "Danube." Two books on journeys down the river through Central Europe, both emerging post-1989. I started with what seemed the easier one, the fictional journey.

Outside of the account of his native Budapest in the middle of the narrative, related with a heavy debt to Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities," this novel meanders when it should flow in a linear direction, like the river itself. Vienna barely registers, Romania's blurred, and the comlplicate meta-fictional structures and intricate levels of intertextuality left me with no aftertaste. Nothing to savor. Doldrums. Sargasso-ish sea.

I know it's au courant to borrow Borges' imaginary books to cite, Joyce's nightmare dialogues, the whole 20c of European Lit when it comes to experimenting with Traveller vs. Tourist and truth vs. fiction, but Esterhazy here fails to reward my efforts.

From about pp. 130-190, yes, the Budapest section does satisfy a bit, but despite the book's paltry footnotes, there is much that left me empty and I couldn't have cared less to track down the erudition Esterhazy possesses and I lack. Unlike Magris (who the former author mentions very late in the book--written a few years after Magris' magisterial survey), the Hungarian author appears to not much care about the story, the characters, or the plot. The book's clumsily conveyed (at least in English) and the reader's given no context from which (unlike Joyce or Borges) some meaning can be extracted given diligence and attention.

What the plot builds up to is anyone's guess; he seems to have tired of the whole enterprise after the Budapest section. Only bare fleeting bits of emotion felt by people who have suffered in the mitteleuropean landscapes he rushes past remain to move you as a reader. Rarely have I read such an ambitious book by a purportedly renowned novelist that fails to rise to even a basic level of engaging my attention--and I've read my share of such post-modern efforts, and I'm familiar with the effort often expected from readers before the pay-off accrues. Here, no jackpot.

Maybe again this post-1989 cynicism and detachment is the proper pose to assume, but Esterhazy through this book comes off looking like a fop, and the fictional fashions he dons look secondhand and no more trendy or even retro this time around. Stick to Magris for a far more nourishing assortment of Danubian delights. Esterhazy whips up a souffle that sounds intriguing on the menu, but when delivered looks flimsy and tastes flat. This entree leaves you feeling you've spent too much (time) for too little (value).

This is the last time that I'm going to try to read a book that the critics describe as brilliant. I might have known that it would go over my head. It did give me a sense of traveling down the Danube River and of the rich culteral background of the aria. I wish I had copied down every name that the writer dropped ,to look up later. Then I would have learned something. This is clearly an aria of the world of which my knowledge is sourly dificient. About 80% of the book, though, didn't make any sense to me. I am herewith sending out a plea to all book reviews. Please use reviewers with average intelligence, not eggheads.