It is this unusual mix that made up one of the narrative’s more interesting facets. And even after they did, there was still a chilly air that swirled around them. It is a wonder that they took up to each other, albeit it took some time. The dichotomy between Emerence and the narrator couldn’t be any starker – from their personalities to their backgrounds, to their demeanors. “I know now, what I didn’t then, that affection can’t always be expressed in calm, orderly, articulate ways and that one cannot prescribe the form it should take for anyone else.” ~ Magda Szabo, The Door When these two women’s lives crossed, the layers of the narrative are slowly peeled and set into motion a bevy of events that would bring the readers before the door of Emerenc’s humble home. On the other hand, Magda is her polar opposite, soft-spoken, timid and servile. Emerence is a spit-fire of a woman, highly opinionated and adamant. That was until she met the narrator, a writer on-the-rise who employed her as her housekeeper. Growing up underprivileged in a small Hungarian town, she witnessed many secrets that she vowed never to tell the world.

Under this guise of mystery, the readers are introduced to Emerence, a long-time house cleaner who has a bigger-than-this world personality. After all, how can a writer captivate a reader but by trying to immediately capture his attention. Is this a mystery? Who is Emerence? Why did the narrator kill her? How did the narrator kill Emerence?īut this mystery is just a guise to keep the reader riveted into the story. The story opened with the narrator’s blunt and tacit confession.

If that is not enough, then I don’t know what is (at least in terms of the world of literature and publishing).Ĭan no longer contain my burgeoning curiosity for what this seemingly exotic book, I immediately immersed in the beauty of its narrative without further ado. Besides, the book was published by the New York Review of Books. It was my innate sense of going after books unheard of took precedence. I don’t have an inkling on who Szabo was nor have I ever heard of any of her works. When I bought Magda Szabo’s The Door through an online book seller, it was all due to sheer curiosity. They share a kind of love – at least until Magda’s long-sought success as a writer leads to a devastating revelation. And Emerence, in her way, has come to depend on Magda. She is Magda’s housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda’s household, becoming indispe+nsable to her. She lives alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives. Emergence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship to Hungary’s Communist authorities. The Door is an unsettling exploration of the relationship between two very different women.

The door by magda szabó