The Lines that...

Krisztina Tóth's stories are rich in their explosions of moments, bursting of silences, and an ambience drifting over fate, as if the author can notice even a flick of air. The interconnected lives, intersected flashes of memories, the difficulty of realizing a personal dilemma and individuality, and a transitioning sense of life and the boundaries that are not visible yet keep crossing over your life – the structure of this collection gathers storms and waves. The author mostly traverses back to the character's childhood memories and taps where there is heat, a discovery, a difficulty and therefore the transition, as if it was necessary to cross those rivers of crisis. Following the trajectories of the narrators, we find that, each time the author fabricates an end, we arrive not at similar points but at different zones of realization, trying to figure out the conundrum. The author has a fascination with breaking down the time and its elements, finding a rhythm in each of those.

As I watch the various shades of brown and grey, and the thick smoke swirling up from somewhere, I wonder where the boundary is, that borderline between life and non-life, between life and death, whether there is some kind of definite borderland at all. I wonder about the living and the dead, about how over the years I have learnt nothing, I've merely grown older,…

That's it, the story continues, because he knew that stories never end, they only break off and lie low, like latent diseases, and then resurface and continue to spread, resulting in stabs of pain elsewhere, only for that pain to be passed down from generation to generation.

The first story, Vacant People (Borderline) is composed in a personal grey zone. A woman in her thirties narrates a drifting experience and understanding of life and death, the living and the dead, the shiver and the warmth. In a seamless, almost plotless story, the impression is rather of an immersion into the foggy realities of life. You'll know when you read it. In The Pencil Case (Guidelines), there are two contrasting episodes from the narrator's school days, when the dissociation of the name and the self, of an observant and the participant, the futility of good and evil dawns upon the narrator as a revelation as if finding a clockwork of human expectations, humility and stillness. In Outline Map (Lifeline), as if a monologue of a sick boy, who might be perhaps on the verge of treatment (or dying?) and who has a short lifeline on his left palm, finds himself as if in a lost world, in almost a fever dream narrative. In The Fence (Blood Line), what begins as a recollection of an event when the pet dog got stuck and bloodied in a cat-flap, evolves as if the development of a negative of a scar left by the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 on the narrator's father's body.

The scenic details bring the past to life, while the momentary stops of reflection radiate philosophical exploration as if experienced by a younger self of one's own – by one who's reflecting. It is as if characters are able to switch off the present and take their soul out of their bodies and place it elsewhere for a while. There are characters breaking sensible boundaries and finding their way into a maze in their minds and thoughts. These stories are at times comical as well, in the dramatic turn of events.

In stories where Hungarian political history finds its trail, the strength of the prose has come even sharper, as if we are in the middle of a developing novel. The transition from lightheartedness to dark horrors and realizations in these stories are exciting if read as a technique, but they are also subtleties that represent the complexity of characters and therefore of human lives. The absurd becoming the real, the solitude turning into a sad beauty, and chaotic life becoming a norm - we find the grey ambience turning into a heart of survival. The portrayals of old women are so authentic and vivid, we'll immediately recognize them as someone from around us, breathing in the text – the clear detailing are as such you want to embrace them.

In Ant Map (Line of Passage), the narrator, an unnamed and uncared-for young little girl is left with a scrap collector grandmother who'd draw the trajectory of ant's movement on a map. In The Castle (Frontline), the narrator recalls her summer camp to a castle as a teenager, her fondness and the changes that crisscrossed and marked through those times and who lived then. A hyper-imaginative narrator's routine and comfort are disrupted after an American relative comes to stay at her home, and her teacher crosses a boundary in the Tepid Milk (Barcode Lines). Black Snowman (Grid Lines) transports us to the hubbub of the social estate housing boom in Hungary and the societal drama revolving around it, as witnessed and lived by our narrator. Cold Floor (Baseline) is in fact like one of the Japanese classic stories. While one of the most dramatic and dynamic stories is Take Five (Fault Line). As we progress in the collection, we find ourselves blending the experience of characters and almost believe that these in fact all are living in the same generation (perhaps the fall of the communist era in Hungary), through the same personal crisis, experiencing similar individual victories and losses. And the way, the first and the last story resonate, we exhale a sigh of relief, that the circle has been completed, that the characters have reached their destination, and that all living and dead have finally found peace.

One way or another, even if it sometimes come apart at the seams, the world is a web of often opaque laws, or of interconnections glistening like gossamer in the pale light of dawn, with the ends of each strand tied to a  different corner of time.

We tend to believe that these stories are particularly life and times of a young Hungarian girl, now remembered from a distant future. Dreams, hopes, musings and revelations of a young girl (there are male narrators too) – these stories give a sense of a journey of self-discovery through experience and observations, from close and far, from associations and dissociations with one's self. Stories also carry political, societal and pop-cultural aspirations of the time, and the evolution of our narrator's experience to live through those. In one of the stories, as if it is the final act in the catharsis of love – a woman burying love notes in Japan – we find elements of love, tragedy and renunciation. At times, we find the reclusive cover of simple imaginations that gives an escape to the narrators when in fact they are surrounded by clouds of existential crisis and happiness – losing self in the memories, and in the stillness. Transitioning identity and memory has been one of the leitmotifs of these thematic stories. The fleeting details of the surroundings, heat and even air and smell are crisp and passionately created as if they too are accomplices of the tipping points/lines that alienate you from being and the surroundings.

The borderline between life and death, guidelines between presence and absence, scar separating the trauma and the terror, line marking the coming of age, gridlines mapping the history and subtle horror, mirror lines of personal crisis, the line of betrayal and loss, line throbbing with memories, line separating sad reality and comforting fantasy, line between now and then – the commonalities of these stories lie in the separation that defines us in unique ways, at unique ages. Barcode is a visionary exploration of personal and universal experience. Taken together, these stories represent a grand realization and a sensitive candor to the lines that make, break, define and seek and soar redemption for life. These are fresh and bright prose, in line with the glory of Hungarian literature!

Author: Krisztina Tóth
Original Text: Hungarian
Translator: Peter Sherwood
Publisher: Jantar Publishing https://www.jantarpublishing.com/

Source: Review Copy from the Publisher