A review by owlette
This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke
4.0
I highly recommend listening to the audiobook to hear the Yiddish, Hebrew, and Hungarian lines read out loud.
The prose has some rough edges, and I would have preferred faster pacing in the first half. I was not convinced by the utility of including Azriel, an angel of death, in the main trio along with Csilla and Tomas. He stopped moving the plot after he saved Csilla in the very first chapter, and his relationship with Tomas felt tacked on compared to the one with Csilla.
Otherwise, the author succeeds in employing Jewish fabulist and fantastical devices to dramatize the 1956 Hungarian revolution without sugarcoating the history. Magic does not restore Hungary's sovereignty from the USSR, nor does it stop a mob from lynching a man who works for the regime's secret police in the streets in daylight.
I would love to pick up the text again to reread some of the things I missed such as Csilla's father's journal entries. Csilla's father is one of the most vivid characters even though its' been years since he was killed by the regime when the book starts. I love the answer Szendrey gives to Csilla for why he didn't read Csilla's father's journals when he was entrusted with them:
The prose has some rough edges, and I would have preferred faster pacing in the first half. I was not convinced by the utility of including Azriel, an angel of death, in the main trio along with Csilla and Tomas. He stopped moving the plot after he saved Csilla in the very first chapter, and his relationship with Tomas felt tacked on compared to the one with Csilla.
Otherwise, the author succeeds in employing Jewish fabulist and fantastical devices to dramatize the 1956 Hungarian revolution without sugarcoating the history. Magic does not restore Hungary's sovereignty from the USSR, nor does it stop a mob from lynching a man who works for the regime's secret police in the streets in daylight.
I would love to pick up the text again to reread some of the things I missed such as Csilla's father's journal entries. Csilla's father is one of the most vivid characters even though its' been years since he was killed by the regime when the book starts. I love the answer Szendrey gives to Csilla for why he didn't read Csilla's father's journals when he was entrusted with them:
"I didn't want the version of Simon he didn't give to me himself. ... I am happy with the man I had for as long as I had him."I was reminded of a recent New Yorker article where the author describes imposter syndrome as "the gap that persists between the internal experiences of selfhood—multiple, contradictory, incoherent, striated with shame and desire—and the imperative to present a more coherent, composed, continuous self to the world." I never thought I would be motivated to keep a journal as a vessel to contain our multifaceted selfhood.