Abigail by Magda Szabo
boarding school, a benevolent statue, and WWII
I was initially drawn to this novel simply because it takes place at a boarding school. As a general fan of campus novels and academic settings—and as someone who spent her youthful years wishing she could go to a boarding school (is that normal?)—that was enough to draw me in. Add a rebellious teen girl and a benevolent statue called Abigail, and I was sold.
Magda Szabo is an author I’ve been meaning to read for a while now, and this seemed like a great place to start. So let’s get into the synopsis and review!
Synopsis
Abigail, the story of a headstrong teenager growing up during World War II, is the most beloved of Magda Szabó’s books in her native Hungary. Gina is the only child of a General, a widower who has long been happy to spoil his bright and willful daughter. Gina is devastated when the General tells her that he must go away on a mission and that he will be sending her to boarding school in the country. She is even more aghast at the grim religious institution to which she soon finds herself consigned. She fights with her fellow students, she rebels against her teachers, finds herself completely ostracized, and runs away. Caught and brought back, there is nothing for Gina to do except entrust her fate to the legendary Abigail, as the classical statue of a woman with an urn that stands on the school’s grounds has come to be called. If you’re in trouble, it’s said, leave a message with Abigail and help will be on the way. And for Gina, who is in much deeper trouble than she could possibly suspect, a life-changing adventure is only beginning.
—taken from the NYRB edition
Quick Thoughts
Quiet yet engaging, both funny and heartbreaking in turn, and reminds you what it feels like to be a teenager (aka you know nothing but think you know everything).
Review
The story starts in autumn 1943.
Georgina Vitay, aka Gina, is a 14 year old girl living in Budapest with her widower father, a high-ranking General. Gina has been looked after most of her life by her governess. She spends her time with Auntie Mimo at her home, where she hosts fanciful teas with the social elite and military men. Gina has gotten used to being part of this adult world, and even met a Lieutenant, Feri, who she quite fancies (despite her father’s disapproval).
But this is her life as it is was, something we only get a brief glimpse into in the first pages of the novel. Gina is being sent to a religious boarding school, the Matula Academy, in the Hungarian countryside; away from her father, her aunt, and her friends. In the first ~100 pages of the book, she is angry about her circumstance, quickly falls out with her new classmates, and plans her escape from school. Her escape fails, and so she returns to life at the Matula…
And that’s where the synopsis leaves us.
It only covers the first bit of the novel, and doesn’t quite let on to what happens through the rest of it. That means I never really knew where this book was going, and the slow discovery is part of what makes it so special. It’s not a thriller, but it’s certainly a suspenseful novel—just not in an edge-of-your-seat kind of way. It’s much quieter than that, perhaps deceptively so. The reader is put squarely in the shoes of Gina, who never really knows what’s going on either (though she thinks she does!).
Szabo’s method of revealing bits of information only as needed gives this story such an engaging quality. We learn things along with Gina, rarely before. At page ~200, I decided I had to just power through and finish, because I needed to know what, exactly, was going to happen to our protagonist. Occasionally, Szabo would add in a sentence or paragraph with some foresight, or a brief perspective from future Gina. This trick was doled out sparingly, but it always perked me up after a slower chapter. It told me that YES something was about to happen.
There are so many elements to this novel, I find it hard to touch on them all, even though I think every detail deserves attention. There is Gina and her classmates; the mysterious life of the teachers and staff at the school; World War II casting a shadow over the whole story; an anti-war dissident vandalizing statues about town; commentary on war, nationalism, and religion; a traditional coming of age story; a seemingly-magic statue…and still, so much more.
…
Near the end of the book, after much is revealed to Gina, she recalls something her teacher often said in class:
“In any work of literature the most interesting bits are in the detail…Be sure to attend to them closely.”
It felt like a little tap on the head from Szabo saying, see, those details were important—were you paying attention? At every turn, I felt as if I was right there next to Gina, scrambling my way through whatever was happening, trying to figure things out, being taught a few lessons myself.
…
If I had to choose one thing that made me love this book more than anything, it would certainly be Gina. She is headstrong and rebellious, described as “the most difficult student” by the head of the school. I LOVE a rebellious teenager, because I too was difficult and rebellious at that age. I believed I always knew best, that I was the smartest and most mature teen ever, and Gina is exactly the same.
This character feels extremely real, as do the rest of the girls at the boarding school. They act like teen girls, and think like teen girls, and most of us know by now that that includes being short-sighted (what teen sees beyond the immediate future?). Reading about teenagers as an adult can be frustrating or unrelatable when it’s done poorly, but here it was done perfectly.
…
Overall, Abigail was such an enjoyable read, though a bit slow at times. I’m looking forward to reading more of Szabo’s work in the future, and I absolutely recommend this novel for anyone who finds themselves interested!
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