The Door
SynopsisPlot
A busy young writer struggling to cope with domestic chores, hires a housekeeper recommended by a friend. The housekeeper's reputation is one built on dependable efficiency, though she is something of an oddity. Stubborn, foul-mouthed, and with a flagrant disregard for her employer's opinions she may even be crazy. She allows no one to set foot inside her house; she masks herself with a veil and is equally guarded about her personal life. And yet Emerence is revered as much as she is feared. As the story progresses, her energy and passion to help become clear, extinguishing any doubts arising out of her bizarre behavior.
Story
About this book
Magda Szabo's The Door, published in Hungarian as Az Ajto in 1987, follows a writer named Magda who hires a housekeeper, Emerence, on a friend's recommendation. Their connection develops over roughly twenty years in twentieth-century Hungary. Emerence is dependable and tireless in her work, yet stubborn, coarse in speech, and openly dismissive of her employer's opinions. She lets nobody past her own front door.
Emerence covers her face with a veil and says almost nothing about her earlier life, which leaves her both feared and admired by the people around her. Magda, absorbed in writing and public life, gradually begins to press for answers. A dog the two women take in becomes part of what holds them together, and their arguments carry genuine humor alongside the friction.
The novel sets one kind of force, literary and verbal, against another that is physical and practical. Around the household, the history of twentieth-century Hungary keeps pressing in, and the rooms Emerence guards hold matters she has never explained to anyone. Szabo builds the book around trust, privacy, and how much one person can ever know of another.
