I read Julie Orringer’s The Invisible Bridge after travelling a little in central and eastern Europe, falling in love with Budapest along the way. The experience of the Second World War there is very different from the one I’m more familiar with in my part of Europe.
Opening in Budapest in 1937, Orringer’s novel tells the story of three young Jewish men, filled with the possibly of a bright future, from the point of view of Andras who wins a scholarship to a prestigious Parisian school of architecture, falling passionately in love with Klara, a Hungarian exile. Tibor is next to leave, studying medicine in Mussolini’s Italy, but Matays’s plans for a glittering dancing career are scuppered when Hungary is drawn into the war. Orringer’s absorbing narative follows Andras from his early youthful triumphs through the appalling conditions suffered in forced labour camps, clinging to the hope of Klara and their children’s survival. An immersive, intensely moving novel, made all the more so given that Orringer drew on her own family’s history in researching it.
What about you, any blasts from the past you’d like to share?
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One of the best doorstoppers I’ve read!
So absorbing! It really resonated with me.
I loved this book. It’s some years since I read it, and I can remember it still. Julie Orringer seems to have remained a little under the radar. And while nothing else I’ve read by her quite measures up to The Invisible Bridge, she can certainly write and I’m surprised she hasn’t got a higher profile – in the UK, anyway.
I’d certainly like to explore more of her writing but there doesn’t seem to be much available in the UK, sadly.
At the least you should be able to source The Flight Portfolio, and How to Breathe Underwater?
I’ll look into that. Thank you.
I remember this book! I couldn’t stop listening. I sat in the driveway till my [late teens] kids came out to see if I’d died or something but I was just listening!
It’s that kind of story, isn’t it.
I hope it is okay that I’m adding this post to my latest #ThrowbackThursday link party, since it is a nostalgic post. If you have another one this month, the link to the party is here https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/8d96ceeb18214f1c82b5c15fb272211c
Thank you, Davida. More than happy to be added.
This completely passed me by! it sounds really immersive.
One to lose yourself in. It’s a doorstopper but don’t let that put you off.
Never heard of this one but it sounds great!
Such a poignant, absorbing story.