[ book tip by Gábor Palkó ] Yet that wasn’t what he became. He could have, but didn’t. The novel conjures up possible paths and visions of successful lives, but then leaves them not only unfulfilled but lets them succumb to ruin and destruction, and sink into the ‘subhuman’. Or the characters are simply killed, bumped off, disembowelled. He likes crabs best, though by no means to eat. People don’t eat crabs or, to use the Latin word, cancer  (for the novel is far removed from adorning itself with any gastronomic or artistic subtleties) – cancer devours the body. Or alcohol. We entangle ourselves in such a thicket of dissatisfaction, of senseless and ignominious decay, that when we put the book down we can only extricate ourselves with difficulty. The world presented in the book is so dismal and dark, that it calls forth an elementary gesture of protest from those who experience it. This is one of its strongest effects. Why doesn’t anyone succeed at anything? Why don’t the characters have a chance? And why don’t the figures on the cover have hands to do something? Whose thoughts are these, making everything so futile und pointless? Whose pessimistic or rather depressed, fatalistic voice is it that speaks so contemptuously of all humans (and in particular women)? And what is the point of showing us all this horror? There are no answers to these questions. We are given no perspective from which to understand why everything has to be seen this way. We are also left in the dark as to the relationship of the uniquely wrought sentences and drawn-out rambling language of the text to the debasing environment of this fictitious world, devoid of all values. This very discrepancy demands (and triggers) activity from us; idleness is not possible if we want to participate in the reading experience. We have to take devious routes that go beyond the actual events, beyond the language that changes depending on the setting and the complicated games played by the text, though even our utmost attention cannot guarantee that things will eventually fall into place. The relation between work, text, language and life is constantly changing and falling into disarray, and the reader is called upon to plug into this process.

[ book info ] Háy, János: A gyerek. Palatinus, Budapest, 2007 . ISBN: 9789639651555.