Skylark
SynopsisPlot
It is 1900, give or take a few years. The Vajkays—call them Mother and Father—live in Sárszeg, a dead-end burg in the provincial heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Father retired some years ago to devote his days to genealogical research and quaint questions of heraldry. Mother keeps house. Both are utterly enthralled with their daughter, Skylark. Unintelligent, unimaginative, unattractive, and unmarried, Skylark cooks and sews for her parents and anchors the unremitting tedium of their lives.
Story
About this book
Set in the autumn of 1899, Skylark follows an elderly Hungarian couple, the Vajkays, through one unusual week. They live in Sárszeg, a provincial town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Father spends his days on genealogical research and heraldry. Mother keeps house. Their unmarried daughter, nicknamed Skylark, cooks and sews for them and anchors their quiet life. When Skylark leaves for a rare visit to relatives in the country, the couple is alone.
At first the Vajkays are lost without her. Gradually they return to the social life of the town they had withdrawn from: dinners, theater, conversation with neighbors. Pleasures they had set aside resurface across the week, and with them feelings that are harder to admit. Kosztolányi uses the daughter's absence to expose what the parents have hidden from themselves about their attachment and its cost.
Dezső Kosztolányi published the novel in 1924, drawing on the provincial Hungary he knew from childhood. It is regarded as a central work of twentieth-century Hungarian fiction, built on controlled irony and close observation of small-town society at the turn of the century. The action covers a single week and stays within one household's ordinary hours.
