Customer Reviews

The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels

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"the Notebook" is one of the most powerful books I have ever read, and it is written the way books should be: easy to read, engaging, to the point, short, and thoroughly thought-provoking. When you are done with "The Notebook", it forces you to sit and ponder what you have just read. The book really twists the conventions of the first person narrative, so that even though the narrator(s) are thoroughly convincing, you are not sure what to believe. This convention also makes the narrators' often immoral and reprehensible acts believable and understandable. This only adds to the moral conundrum of this story, a cunundrum that is at the heart of war-time life.

I first read this in 1994; I'm extremely happy to see it finally in print again, and with the two sequels thrown in as well. A terrific and engaging novel!

Uncanny. How can such simple, methodical prose achieve suchpoetry? How can such bare-bones@descriptions and lists of nouns provoke such emotion? Kristof (a Hungarian who writes in French) writes like a dream--and begs comparison with Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov. The Notebook is a black comedy of the war years written in the first person plural by inseparable twin boys. Brought up by a filthy, illiterate old woman, they learn life's most precious skills--to lie, steal, fight, beg and blackmail. In The Proof, one twin flees across the border and the one left behind never recovers. He spins a heartbreaking tale of loneliness despite raising a family and pursuing an affair among totalitarian drabness.@The Third Lie contains two versions of the exile's return 50 years later. In the first half, the exile wanders around in search of his brother, and in the process, reinventing his own life. In the second half, the twin who stayed spins another heartrending version of the boys' past. Read in succession, the trilogy enchants with its facts and fables, its onion-layer structure, and its icy prose.

The Notebook (by far the best of the 3 books) describes the lives of a nameless twins that grow up in a Hungarian border village during the second world war. The are raised by their grandmother, or maybe it is better to say that they grow up despite the presence of their grandmother. The children find ways to survive the war: on the one hand they can be extremely friendly and caring, for example for the girl next door, on the other hand they are 2 extremely awful boys who steal, deceive, betray and even murder whenever they think this is necessary. A beautiful, oppressive book about what war does to children, but also about the capacity of children to survive under extreme conditions.

The Proof describes the life of Lucas, who remains in the Hungarian village after the war. He tries to get a decent life, but every time he seems to have some luck something awful happens which brings him back to square one. At the end of the book a German appears in the village who may or may not be his brother Claus.

The Third Lie consists of 3 parts: one in which Claus describes the search for his brother after his return to the capital. Finally he finds an old, misanthropist poet whose name is also Klaus and who denies to be his brother. In the second part this Klaus describes why he does not want to recognize his brother.

It is fairly difficult to write one review of 3 books, even when these books are a logical sequel of each other. In every new book the perspective changes and the reader is left in doubt. Did this twin brother really exist? Who is Lucas and who is Claus? In the end the common denominator of the three books is the notion that real friendship does not exist, that nobody can be trusted and that every story can be told in different ways, depending on the perspective.

If taken one by one the three parts of this trilogy are good--well written, precise in a terryfying way, emotionally shocking (surely not something to read when in a depressive mood); but if you buy this and read it as one big novel in three parts it's simpy amazing. I can't tell you why, that's part of the fun. The only thing I can say: things aren't exactly what they seem. Outstanding literary achievement by this expatriate Hungarian writer, one of the most facinating literary voices in Central Europe with Thomas Bernhard. A must-read if there ever was one!

Mathias is a boy whose life has so many imperfections. He is troubled with looking like an ogre being born deformed. The doctors said that he will be like that for the rest of his life. His mother left him to go live in the big city and his father, who is also his mother's father, is in jail or maybe even dead.

Left to the care of Lucas, Mathias lives out his life from an intelectual stand point. Lucas taught him that while other children would grow big and strong, so would he. Mathias corrected Lucas knowing damn well the sadness of the truth. Lucas explained that he would work hard on his mind a grow an ever strong unsderstanding of the world around him. Sure enough, Mathias did just that and was the envy of all his classmates for always having the right answers.

Lucas loved Mathias very much, but was only a boy himself when he took on the responsibility of raising him. Lucas is a very unikely Father being one with such a disturbed past and shady presence. He goes around the city making money at night by playing his harmonica in bars and by selling produce by day. His relationships are very odd including the priest of the town who he plays chess with on a nightly basis. Lucas himself does not believe in God, but the priest takes the role of a father figure for him in the story. He also has relations of a more intimate kind with 2 women and a man in the story.

I first read "The Notebook" when I was in High School. A Video Game known as "Earhtbound 64" (never released) had led me to read this story. ONe character from that game would have been based from this story. I had no idea what I was about to read. It definitely warped my mind as a youth and became an instant favorite. Now 5 years later I read "The Proof" and remembered why it is I had enjoyed "The Notebook" so much tp begin with.

This story is definitely not for the weak at stomach. It is can become pretty disturbing and downright sickening at some points of the story. It is, however, very well written and leaves feeling emotions the characters must have felt when they were going through the events in their lives.

As other reviewers have noted the plot well and carefully, my only comment to add here is that this book is as confounding as life itself: the scene that is always continous is never the same twice. It is rewritten over again and again..the characters are the same, or are they?
It is a different novel depending on what level you read it..a war novel, a novel about love and friendship, a novel about truth and lie, a novel about memory and forgetting: it is a cross between the kind of novel Gunter Grass has written, and also the kind of novel Kundera wrote..quite amazing.

This is probably the best book you will read this year. Her writing is incredible, the plot fascinating in its historic and geographic absurdity (where are we? East Germany? Hungary?), the details vivid and unforgettable. Why are his other books not translated?

The story took place around 1938 to 1945, a twins living in the borderland between Hungary and Austria. They should help their grandmother in daytime, when no need to do this, they do some exercises: such as fright together, insult each other.... to train themselves become more cruelty, inhumanity and immoral. One day, in order to break through border wall, they let they father to die from explosion of mine and then find a safety way to get into another country. One of them leave .......... At last, Kristof overthrows and says the previous context was only the imaginary story from one ( maybe both ) of this twins. There is too much paradox, because it is a story of truth, imagine and lie. The reader never know which is real or lie.

I read these in French a long time ago. The collected volume is decent but the two second novellas are not well translated as they don't convey Kristof's original narrative tone very well. The first story, "The Notebook" does a better job in this regard but still lacks the proverbial "punch" of the original French version. Reader beware - the three novellas are translated by different writers - something I found quite odd in this context.

I was very impressed by the condition of the book I received. Though I bought it as a used book it was like new. Totally impressed!