Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

Another Love: A Novel by Erzsébet Galgóczi, Felice Newman, Ines Rieder

2 reviews

thecommonreader's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

my most beloved book, so bittersweet to read about lesbians in the past from my country:( love them 
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morebedsidebooks's review

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sad

4.5

What did I say last night, when we decided to go to the provinces together? Most of us go with the flow—a skill we learn from society and the families we are born into—because we fail to examine society’s mechanisms. If we do, we get scared and turn away from the abyss opening up in front of us. But, if the human being wants to become truly herself, if she wants to be a real person, with an individual and indispensable face, then she must not turn away from herself. She has to take her life into her own hand, giving shape to an idea that emerged formlessly from his soul. This requires an incredible amount of courage. It’s a path leading through crisis, doubt and uncertainties. 
Do you know what came to my mind when I turned eighteen and thus came of age? Not that I was eligible to vote, that I could get married without my parents’ permission, or that I could receive and inheritance—should there be one—but that from this day on I could be hanged for a crime which yesterday would have just sent me to a reformatory. In other words I was thinking about the law… Every human being is immortal, because we live on in out children, in our friends, and in people we don’t know, whom we have only influenced in the slightest way— but not everyone deserves well of humanity. I decided that I wouldn’t do anything for which I could be hanged, but I also would not neglect anything which would make eternity worth the effort… ‘The conformist merely takes up space provided in a world which could do just as well without him.’ 



Another Love by Hungarian author Erzsébet Galgóczi is a historical crime novella that was the basis for a lesbian cult film in the 1980s. Also, unabashedly political looking to the effects of the devastation of Hungary in WWII and subsequently under the influence of the USSR especially after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. 
 
Marosi, a lieutenant with the border patrol, tries to understand why a woman he held an unrequited love for since childhood was gunned down one September 1959 stormy night, apparently trying to defect. Eva Szalanczky made her way up from an impoverished background. Despite constant pressures on journalists, she managed to freelance in Budapest. However, her articles would often be too controversial for print. The info in her date book leading mostly to those who likewise ran afoul of authorities—hanged, imprisoned, turned informer, or fled. Her colleagues, and few friends left end up speaking more about their hardships and lives under oppressive circumstances than Eva. Livia Horváth, currently hospitalized after her husband tried to kill her, at first objects to having Eva brought up to her at all. But slowly as each confession more or less is drawn out a lonely, passionate, troubled, and suicidal picture starts to form. 
 
The film adaptation given the title in English of Another Way directed by Károly Makk appeared two years after the book in 1982. Makk getting a bit of a crash course on lesbian culture. Like most transitions from one medium to another some differences occurred too. Though filmed in Hungary, due to worries with being associated with such content the leads ending up being not Hungarian but Polish actresses Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak and Grażyna Szapołowska, who were then dubbed. But the former delivering a performance winning Best Actress at Cannes. And the film went on around the world, still remembered. 
 
It would be a bit longer for the book itself, the English edition of Another Love was published in 2007 and offers a glossary plus essays covering Hungarian history plus various political or literary figures along with details about Galgóczi. A lesbian herself who unfortunately died in 1989 unable to witness the Autumn of Nations that would sweep the Communist Bloc countries. Though the Hungary of the present, as many places, one where media freedom and LGBTQ+ rights are under pressure. Another Way reminds of the many costs of repression. 
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