It was clear, right from the very beginning: this was unlike any other book I’d read before. SUNFLOWER is a fever dream, violently romantic, lush and crazy and demanding and bewildering and beautiful. Its language follows that dream logic, the metaphors swinging every which way, every mundane act elevated to hyperbole. And it’s dizzying collective of characters?There is a woman, quiet and too-beautiful, and the two men who love her—one, a good-for-nothing lover hands long open to be granted her wealth, the other, an Álmos-Dreamer [a long line of lovers who have killed themselves for mostly unrequited love.] And, indeed, Andor Álmos-Dreamer kills himself for Eveline—but when Eveline rushes to his cooling corpse, he wakens. Of course he does. There is also Mr. Pistoli, a Casanova now firmly middle-aged, and all the baggage of his past loves, past marriages—three of them, his wives gone mad. Mr. Pistoli is in love with Miss Malvina Maszkerádi, the feisty, determined-spinster. Miss Maszkerádi is in love with a tree, and would like to stay that way, thank you very much.Ah, but this is the best I can do, for now: Read SUNFLOWER. Read it over weeks and months, it changes every time you return to it, and that is never a bad thing for something so charged with life and language and the strangest ways people decide to live and love. Read SUNFLOWER, read, read, read. I know I will again, and soon, hopefully soon.
leaving aside the thornier pathways of whether or not translation and focusing instead on what one has received: an unabashedly romantic and lugubrious collection of mostly extended similes with alcoholic veins from early 20th century mitteleuropa, hungary, that maybe indeed did lose some of its poetry in the carrying across but still full of its share of mist, must, wine, violence, girls, boys, witches, whores, winds, candles, snow, marshes, howls, gambling, musing, collapses, self-indulgence, and death..nice passages now and again but not enough to sustain the length..we have need of more krudy in translation, maybe some of his earlier work that was not written in installments for the papers, before passing judgement..as such we remain rather, erm, dry
Do You like book Sunflower (2007)?
I live with a fear. Each novel I read will be effaced in my mind. The recall will blur and float into ether. The inscriptions will be softened and removed, leaving only vague blushes of recognition, while fertile patches of perfection are lost to me forever. Novels such as Sunflower are very supect in this regard. There isn't much of a plot as far as any arc is concerned. There are only images. They are certainly eloquent and incisive, but they are but stills and miniatures. Such taunts my seizured brain.
—Jonfaith
I hardly know what to say about this one. Krudy writes like no one I've ever read before, although the thought came to me often that the dreamlike and yet vivid way he writes about snow and cold and autumn beautifully offsets the way Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about the tropics. His skill at conjuring so many emotive images out of one scene is incredible. His mind overflows with dazzling images - I really don't know who is more impressive, the writer or the translator. He goes on and on describing a moment or scene, as if unraveling a ball of silk from which come more strands, each of vibrant and varying colour, and he neglects none of them, but follows them each to their end. And then he will make a very concise statement that is so beautiful and sharp that it takes your breath away. I loved this one in particular - "A glove pulled off the hand might feel the way Mr. Pistoli felt."My thanks to Bettie for recommending this one to me. I would have given it 5* except that I wished Krudy cared a little more about plot, but that's just personal taste. If you like magic realism and prose that is poetry, you'll love "Sunflower".
—Sylvester
"Next he struck up a conversation with his own foot, evidence that he had not renounced social life for good.""Meanwhile, Risoulette stood in the door, bewildered, like a woman who has spilled kerosene on her skirt but cannot find a match to set it aflame.""One has to be very stupid to find life beautiful.""She embraced him and her kisses were as drawn out as a honeymoon, as joyous as a reunion and as submissive as a harem. She quivered as if every bone in her body were sobbing, like a maiden on her wedding night."
—John
