A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside the tonic of ordinary things. Magda Szabó was born in Debrecen, eastern Hungary, in 1917, and began her working life as a teacher. It is a very well-written book, as we follow Gina’s travails both with her classmates and the staff as well as what is happening in the outside world. Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. There is clearly opposition in the town and, perhaps, in the school to the conduct of the war and the alliance with and subsequent occupation by the Germans and all of this has an effect on Gina. Much of the story is set there and deals with her problems fitting in to a conventional, strict and religious school but also the fallout from the war and the reasons her father finally gives her for sending her there. He suddenly decides to send the governess back to France, as Hungary and France are at war and Gina to a boarding school in a remote part of Hungary. Her mother died when she was two and she has been brought up by her father, a military general and a French governess.

It is set in 1943-44 and tells the story of the fourteen-fifteen year old Georgina (Gina) Vitay. This first appeared in Hungary fifty years ago where it has been Szabó’s most popular novel. The latest addition to my website is Magda Szabó‘s Abigél (Abigail). Szabó Magda Kossuth-díjas magyar író beszél felvételrl az Abigél cím ifjúsági regénye születésérl a Msorszolgáltatás-támogató és Vagyonkezel Alap (MTVA) Rádió és Televíziótörténeti Kiállítóhelyén 2017-ben, ahol a népszer tévéfilmsorozat készítésekor felhasznált korh kellékeket is megtekinthetik az érdekldk.

Abigel szabo magda