The afterlife of stars /

IN LATE OCTOBER 1956, after seven years under oppressive Soviet rule, Hungary's students and writers initiated a revolution that looked at first - to Western eyes, at least - like a swift victory for democracy. Revolutionaries pulled down a 26-foot-high statue of Stalin and held mass demonstrations at the Parliament building. When Soviet tanks began firing into the crowds, the people's fervor only increased. Within days, the Hungarian Army had split into factions and the government crumbled. The Soviets announced they would call back their troops. In an editorial, this newspaper declared that the lie of Communism had fractured and expressed a cautious hope that the world might soon enter an age without a Cold War. But a few days later, the Kremlin reversed its decision to let the new government stand. Soviet forces surged into Budapest, and free Hungary began to fall. At the beginning of "The Afterlife of Stars," Joseph Kertes's devastating yet unnervingly funny new novel, the young narrator, Robert Beck (who is, he informs us, exactly 9.8 years old), happens upon a scene of counterrevolutionary carnage at Budapest's Oktogon Square: From each of its eight lampposts hangs a Hungarian soldier. The one who captures Robert's attention looks down with "evergreen eyes," his auburn hair "parted and brilliantined so that it shone even at this distance." Kertes knows whereof he speaks: When he was 4 years old he witnessed the hanging of soldiers at this same square, hours before his own family fled Hungary. But it's not every writer who can render a scene like this with such verisimilitude so many years after the fact. That image - the meticulously coifed, green-eyed dead man, a kind of human analog to the red, white and green Hungarian flag - appears again and again in Robert's memory, an inescapable reminder of personal and national tragedy. But Robert and his 13-year-old brother, the ardent, headstrong Attila, never avert their eyes from the horrors around them. In fact, they do just the opposite, running toward danger, toward knowledge, not with morbid curiosity but with an insatiable need to understand the world. It's Attila who drives this quest, towing his brother along on a leash of mock-endearments ("My alabaster darling," "my birdling," "my little imbecile"). Attila's inquiries range in scale from the minuscule (Why is semen such a "drab, pearly" color when it has such an important job?) to the cosmic (Why did God bother to create the universe when he could foresee all the disasters ahead?). That last question isn't an idle one. Attila and his family, Holocaust survivors, have already experienced enough hardship to challenge any cohesive theology. Now, in the aftermath of the revolution, they become refugees, fleeing toward an unimaginable future. The family's plan is to travel through Austria and France, then cross the ocean to Canada. By the time they make it to Paris and the home of the narrator's great-aunt, an opera singer whose hands were horribly disfigured during the war, Robert hazards the hope that the Beck family has managed at last to sidestep history. But the opposite turns out to be true. The family's personal history is a fraught one (you can read about it in Kertes's previous novel, "Gratitude"), and it exerts a black hole's gravitational pull. In a moonlit solarium, Aunt Hermina tells Robert the story of her torture by the Nazis. And in a gingerbread-trimmed shed behind the house, a black leather chest yields mementos of the war. Its letters and diaries shed light on the story of a cousin, Paul Beck, who served as Raoul Wallenberg's right-hand man in Budapest and was responsible for the Beck family's survival. Like Wallenberg, Paul disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Attila now becomes obsessed with learning his cousin's fate and enlists Robert in his quest for the truth. But the novel has spent its first three quarters involving us in another, more immediate story: that of Robert and Attila, two Hungarian Jewish boys on their journey to a new world. Though I shared the brothers' curiosity about that black trunk and what its contents might reveal, I longed to see Attila and Robert outside the confines of Hermina's house, venturing into the city, experiencing Paris through eyes accustomed to the privations of Communist Hungary. The brothers' only such foray, through an ancient web of sewers, reveals an angle on Paris that (ironically enough) feels utterly new. Kertes's penchant for lyrical listmaking hits a high note here as he imagines the contents of the malodorous subterranean river: "hairs by the millions and trillions, . . . marzipan monkeys, a guitar pick, brown milk, teeth, handkerchiefs, a clarinet reed, a clarinet, creamy goodness, 20,000 francs rolled up in the fingers of a long glove once white, . . . thoughts of you washed off a face, . . . the testicles of a bloodhound, the spit of opinions, tens of thousands of trillions of X's and Y's wiggling their way to battle." The river is mortality itself, the inevitability that swallows up everything. The tragedy at the heart of the novel isn't Paul Beck's disappearance, nor is it Aunt Hermina's disfigurement or the family's other less visible scars. It's the fact that, though the war might be over and the Hungarian revolution finished as quickly as it started, the survivors of those events are just beginning to feel their aftereffects. Like the distant stars whose "ancient light," as Robert's grandmother tells him, takes many, many years to reach us, these conflicts will continue to radiate their destructive power for generations. Even on democratic soil, the Becks aren't safe. Not all of them will survive the journey out of Europe, and it's questionable whether those who do make it are the lucky ones. What is clear - and unquestionably lucky for us - is that Kertes's memories survived his own family's flight to Canada and have found expression in this inspired and deeply affecting novel. "I'm not asking for a story for the ages," Robert tells his Aunt Hermina. "I'm asking what happened to you." Kertes has given us both. JULIE ORRINGER is the author of "The Invisible Bridge," a novel, and "How to Breathe Underwater," a collection of stories.

Nine-year-old Robert's older brother, Attila, is irrepressible, even as a revolution forces the family from Hungary. The 13-year-old directs a barrage of questions to almost everyone the brothers meet on their dangerous journey out of Budapest in 1956, from a bishop at a convent where they find shelter to a master perfumer sharing their bus ride to Paris. But his most pressing interrogations are directed at his own family members, about the mystery swirling around their cousin and his actions during WWII, and how their family was able to survive when so many Jews were slain. Seen through Robert's eyes, Attila is almost a force of nature, such a whirlwind of curiosity and emotion that Robert is amazed by how quickly his brother can fall asleep. Kertes, who himself escaped Hungary after the 1956 revolution, delivers a fast-paced and taut narrative that captures how inscrutable the world's cruelties can be to the children who witness them. Stirring and haunting, The Afterlife of Stars memorably shows how the bonds of brotherhood stay strong in a crisis.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2016 Booklist

In telling the story of two brothers fleeing Hungary with their family, Kertes (Gratitude) focuses more on their emotional and intellectual journey than on the actual events unfolding around them. Nine-year old Robert and 13-year-old Attila are forced to flee as Russian forces move into Budapest in 1956 to crush the Hungarian revolution. Their Jewish family hopes to make it to Paris where their great-aunt Hermina lives. During their dangerous trek, the boys ponder the world around them. As the brothers and their family deal with death and the revealing of family secrets, they are brought together and torn apart until they are ultimately broken by tragedy. Though this book has a very interesting story line, it is often overwhelmed by the brothers' thoughts and musings, the deep philosophical nature of which seem rather unrealistic coming from two young boys. The story has great potential, but lacks the historical substance that might have helped balance and ground the philosophical ponderings. Agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative Artists. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.