This compact, subtly playful novel by Hungarian critic and poet Dezső Kosztolányi (1885-1936) chronicles the uneventful lives of the Vajkay family, who reside in a parochial outpost called Sárszeg, somewhere within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We meet Akos Vajkay and his wife (the narrator usually refers to them as Mother and Father) as the 19th Century is winding down. It’s September 1, and they are packing because their daughter, nicknamed Skylark (we never learn her real name), is leaving for a week to visit her aunt and uncle in Tarkö, on the Hungarian plain. Akos is retired and spends his days researching heraldry and lineages. His wife keeps house. But it seems the presiding force within the Vajkay home is Skylark, who, at thirty-five, unattached with no prospects, well versed in household chores, is both a hopeless burden and a constant focus of doting attention for her parents. Once Skylark has left them standing on the station platform, “waving their little handkerchiefs” as her train recedes from view, the parents are bereft. Skylark too, on board the train, unaccustomed to being on her own without distractions, succumbs to the loneliness and despair that constantly plagues her. But it turns out all is not lost. In their daughter’s absence, Akos and his wife are free to do as they please. They dine out at the best restaurant in town. They attend the theatre. Akos reconnects with a jolly crowd of revelers called the Panthers, with whom he used to socialize but withdrew from after marrying and becoming a father. His wife also enjoys the week emancipated from the daughter’s sobering presence, neglecting the housework, eating chocolate, and playing the piano, which we are told she hasn’t touched in many years. Akos had renounced alcohol and gambling but, encouraged by his friends to throw off the shackles of sobriety, he again takes up the bottle and the cards, and in the small hours of Friday morning returns home uproariously drunk with his winnings overflowing his pockets. It is then, while in the throes of inebriation, that Akos voices to his wife the grim truth of which they are painfully aware but have avoided facing: that their daughter is irredeemably ugly and will never find a husband. For Skylark too, after a good cry on the train, the week is pleasing. Every day is full. In a letter sent while on holiday she regales her parents with a litany of the activities she and her relatives have got up to. Then the week is over. Skylark returns home. Her parents are genuinely ecstatic and relieved to have her back where she belongs, safe in the nest. Life for the Vajkay family returns to normal. It is perhaps a cloistered, unremarkable life, buttoned-down and filled with familiar ritual, in some respects disappointing, but comfortable. The ironies here are subtle, the humour subdued. Kosztolányi never mocks his characters, who take their amusements where they can find them. He simply lets them be. In Skylark, Kosztolányi is sketching a way of life that is neither tragic nor triumphant and in so doing has written a moving and memorable novel. ( )

This is what I wrote in 2011 about this read: 'This is a really, really good book. Written in the 1920's, about a family of three in Hungary in just before the turn of the century. Memorable, human characters; how sad they are. What a twist to have the parents party while the child is away, and how interesting to have comedy and farce intertwined with daily, human suffering." ( )

Mother and Father live in a small provincial Hungarian town, and have devoted their lives to their daughter Skylark. Hope springs eternal that a husband will be found for Skylark, but there is no getting around that fact that she is plain, perhaps ugly is not too harsh a description.
Toward the end of one summer at the turn of the century, Skylark goes away to visit relatives for a week. During Skylark's week away, Mother and Father start enjoying life again, living it up, eating in restaurants, going to the theater. Will the changes they make prevail after Skylark returns?
This is a delightful book, but also a bittersweet book, funny and sad at the same time. We had a great discussion on Litsy. I have 2 more books by Kosztolanyi on my shelf, and hope to get to them soon.

Highly recommended.
4 stars ( )

"So many tears. In all the world she had never thought there could be so many tears", 2 April 2016

This review is from: Skylark (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
The novel opens with a family preparing for their daughter going away to stay with relatives. It's only for a week, but as the train departs, Mother and Father 'could already feel their loneliness. Swelling painfully, it hovered around them in the silence.' They are saddened too by the unspoken knowledge of their daughter's ugliness, the fact that she will never marry.
This novel focuses not on Skylark's holiday but on the week her parents spend. The family usually live quietly, economically. Their daughter does the cooking - good, plain food. But how will things go when they must manage alone?
Enjoyable, comic in places but very sad too. ( )

The title makes one think of beautiful creatures but the book is about a spinster and her parents. The spinster, Skylark, is ugly and has not managed to catch a husband. Her disappointment, and her parents', is hidden from each other by the life they create for themselves.

The book is funny, insightful, and poignant. Parents hurt when their children do, don't they? And a child suffers when the parents are disappointed. This tug between parents and child is beautifully depicted in the book, and the unexpected end could leave you misty-eyed. ( )