- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Granta Books (24 May 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1862072728
- ISBN-13: 978-1862072725
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,117,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
In the early seventies, a group of young dissidents in Budapest signal their break with the system by forming the Gabriel Club. 17 years later, they are reunited when a disturbingly lifelike effigy of their founding member is discovered floating in the Danube.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Accurate Picture,
By Ilona David (Amsterdam) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Gabriel Club (Paperback)
I thought this book was very interesting. What was most important to me was that it didn't patronize the reader. Most writers from the West who write about Eastern Europe and especially about Soviet-era Eastern Europe do so badly and they are patronizing (for instance, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections). It's not just about getting facts wrong, it's about an attitude of superiority and superficiality which is immediately apparent to anyone who's actually from the region. I liked this book because it didn't do that. It got the details right, and it empathized with the plight of the ordinary person, especially the ordinary young person, who doesn't always have the resources to be heroic in the Western manner. I'm not defending passivity. I'm simply pointing out that not everyone could be a political dissident in the commonly understood sense of the term. People had families, they had responsibilties to parents and children, they had to get on with their lives the best they could and that often forced them to make their peace with the authorities whose values they despised. Sometimes they even succumbed to the kind of propaganda who's value is not unknown in the West. Not everyone can be strong, even if they are educated, and not everyone can see through the lies on radio or television and take a stand. Pit an individual against a regime and you will only get one outspoken Sakharov and one outspoken Havel, but they are the moral leaders, and there are many others "under the ground" who are equally important for the cause of freedom for the simple fact that they don't give up living their ordinary lives, they don't kill themselves in despair, they don't emigrate, they simply go on and hope for a better day when the regime will be gone, like all regimes.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A purist's dream,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Gabriel Club (Paperback)
This really is a technical masterpiece, an English teacher's delight. Its a satisfying and unusual read on many levels: its location, its narrative and the clever way in which the author uses gender, tenses, time and distance. It is indeed a difficult book; I'd compare it to starting your skiing career on the intermediate slopes, or jumping into a pool at the deep end, but once youre in and swimming, its great! Its been close to a year since I read this and its still fresh as a daisy in my memory. I strongly recommend it!!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A complex and disturbing tale.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Gabriel Club (Paperback)
This book creates atmosphere impressively, but has its shortcomings. A rear-cover comment calls it "unabashedly literary"; I would say it is perhaps "deliberately and pretentiously literary". Loaded with quotations and references to classic idealistic literature and art, and overstuffed with long, convoluted passages of abstruse dialogue, this book's nice, twisty plot takes a long time to develop and is often ambiguous. The ambiguity is sometimes obviously deliberate, sometimes not. On the good side, the author has very effectively fragmented the plot, hopping back and forth between one character and another, the past and the present, reality and dreams. And the surreal atmosphere is very effective. This is not an easy or simple read. But all in all, after its ambiguous ending, I found myself wondering if it was worth it.
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