Embers [Paperback]

The simple narrative framework allows Henrik to tell the story through his own meditations and his one-sided conversation with Konrad after his arrival. Touching first on the lives and marriages of Henrik's parents, his wife's parents, and then Konrad's parents, Henrik slides obliquely and seductively into the story of his friendship with Konrad, his courtship of Krisztina, and the first four years of his own marriage. As tiny details emerge and build upon one another, the dramatic irony grows. Henrik's vision of himself, his motivations, and his actions appear in sharp relief against the conclusions being drawn by the reader. Henrik is, above all, an aristocrat, imprisoned by a value system he also embraces.

As the parallel dilemmas he imposes on his wife and Konrad emerge ironically from Henrik's narrative, the reader is simultaneously fascinated and frustrated by Henrik's view of his own dilemma and his desire for Truth.... A heart-stopping climax and Konrad's dramatic reply to his interrogation, along with numerous breath-taking descriptions of nature, leave the reader awed by Marai's talent and grateful that this very clever and sensitive study of character and values has been reclaimed for posterity. Mary Whipple Read more ›

Márai marries intrigue and timelessness as he teases out the background to the principal characters, the remaining two of whom meet in old age after an absence of 41 years.

Konrad returns to the family home of the General, Henrik, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains after a self-imposed exile in the Tropics and London. The reunion of the once inseparable contemporaries is called by the General as an opportunity for truth and explanation. However, it is the General who reveals the reason for Henrik's departure. The flight, and the immediately preceding events, revolved around Krisztina, the General's late wife.

Once the men are reunited, dined and have withdrawn the mood darkens. In search of truth past, the General, as if in court, addresses his witness, sets the scene, recites the evidence, and discloses his suspicions before cutting to the chase asking of Konrad two questions for which the dinner was arranged.

Márai's innovation is that the questions strike at a higher level of inquiry than those required to resolve a mere mystery thriller. Certainly a novel of such atmosphere and scope cannot be sustained by the mere fact of a confession....

However, intertwined with this innovation is the major flaw, the fact that over the course of some 100 pages of alleged dialogue between the General and Konrad, we are presented with a soliloquy on these greater questions by the General (for what, if anything, do we live; does survival of a loved one make us a traitor) interrupted only occasionally by Konrad's matter of fact remarks ("you were speaking of the hunt"; "yes" when pressed whether he remembered events.)

Rarely can there have been so inanimate and unhostile an interrogation

While Márai hints at Konrad's evasiveness, his grounds for guilt, we are not presented with a satisfactory account of his reaction to the General's words. They cannot be conveyed by the progress of the General's address which has the immutability of 41 years' anticipation and preparation. And without a description or image of Konrad realizable on film or on stage, there is no riposte to the General's delivery, no variance of pace or intonation to ensnare the reader.

The "duel of words" promised by the dust cover never materializes. The impassivity of the conclusion reinforces the existential aspect evident in Embers - we live, we age, others die, life continues, we die, life in the broader sense continues - while yet undermining the book's dramatic force.

Nevertheless, the rediscovery of Márai, much of whose work is yet to be translated, is to be applauded and everyone can surely give half a day of his or life to the story of how one, two or possible three lives ceased to be on account of a single day at the turn of the century. Read more ›