I’ve read hundreds of books and I would say that this novel is the most detailed psychological study I have ever read. It digs into feeling and motives in exquisite detail, to the point where you ask yourself, how can one person have this much knowledge of human nature? We see a marriage from three perspectives each written in the first person as a conversation with a friend. A man tells his story to a friend in a bar. (This book would make a great 3-act play.) It’s set in Hungary between the Wars; let’s say the late 1930’s.
There’s a lot of blame to go around in these two broken marriages. The man is cold, distant, intellectual and filled with “duty” to running the family business. The first wife is not satisfied with a comfortable but unloving relationship and drives her husband away by prying into his past and looking for a “perfect” marriage. In the second marriage, not to give way any plot, let’s just say he marries his childhood sweetheart who turns out to be a conniving thief. The main theme of the entally class and each person is a bit of a caricature of their class in Europe between the World Wars. İncele
