I read The Fawn as part of this year’s #NYRBWomen24. Last year we also read a book by Szabó — Iza’s Ballad — and with that one, though I was always enjoying the moment, when I’d sit back and reflect I frequently found myself floundering a bit, feeling like I was missing something. To combat that sensation while reading The Fawn I made sure I always had a pen and paper next to me when reading, and for each chapter I took notes: what characters was I learning about, what were they doing, what in general was going on.This helped me retain my footing, which was, I think, necessary because this book drops its reader right in a moment and, as it turns out, the reader won’t know what the context is for most of the book. Here’s how it begins:

I wanted to be here sooner, but I had to wait for Gyurica and you know he’s always late; he said he’d be with me by nine but it was well after eleven when I saw him stepping through the door.

Where is “here”? “Who is Gyurica”? What are we waiting for? And, most intriguingly, who is “you”? As the chapter goes on approximately twenty five characters are mentioned by name. Somehow giving us a lot of information but keeping her cards close to her chest, Szabó won’t have the narrator tell us her own name for several chapters. It’s a few later still before we learn who “you” is.

Keeping us on our toes — and for what reason, I wondered — in this first chapter, as we meet character after character, Szabó’s narrator also introduces us to three time periods: the narrator’s early childhood in Hungary in the decade leading up to World War II (she was born in 1928), her later school years during the war and the German occupation in 1944, and then a decade or so after the end of the war in 1954, when, under the Russians, Hungary has a Communist regime. At that point, she is a successful, wealthy actress, and it is also during this period when she is having her conversation with “you.”

Szabó has the narrator go back and forth amongst these periods, often from one paragraph to the next, with little indication of what’s happening. That, coupled with the nameless narrator and listener, helped set a tone of mystery brought on by, I thought, wariness and mistrust and ego. It felt like someone who wanted to confess but who is more likely to stay silent out of fear and out of pride. This is underlined in lines like this: “That night I almost told you where my mother and father were buried, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak the words.”

There are several relationships in this story, but the one that I think sits at the center (and that is underlined by her relationship with “you”) is her relationship with, Angéla, a woman around her own age whom she grew up with and whom she calls “love incarnate, a little flame of light.” But our narrator says again and again that she hated Angéla their whole life, despite never giving us any indication that Angéla was anything but a trusting, true friend.

So, is our narrator telling us the truth? Regardless, why is she going through all of this in 1954? And what does the elusive “you” have to do with it. The mystery deepens when one of the first things we hear “you” say, if not the first thing, is “I know you love Angéla.” This leads to her having a sleepless night while “you” sleeps next to her.

I wanted to wake you up straight away, get dressed, and inform you that I have loathed and hated Angéla from the moment I first saw her, that I have ever since, and that even when I am dead, if there is any life after death, I shall hate her still.

Intriguing throughout, with roundabout narration and a cloak of silence and distrust over everything, The Fawn often reminded me of the work of Javier Marías, though with a much better grasp (I assume) on the women central to the story.