"My name, the name I use, is Matt Santos. The name I was born with is Mathias Santos. The name I might well have been born with is Matyas Szantos. I am none of these people and I am all of them."
An unexpected call from the Australian consulate makes Matt Santos aware of a painting he believes was looted from his family in Hungary during World War II. To recover it, he must repair his relationship with his judgmental father, uncover his family history, and reconnect with his own Judaism.
Along the way, Matt is torn between his doting girlfriend, Tracy, and his alluring attorney, Rachel, with whom he travels to Budapest to unearth the truth and confront the central question: How do we move forward when the past looms unreasonably large?
It pleases me enormously when the first book I read in a new year, decade in this case, is such a good read. I enjoyed this book immensely as it is full of complex characters which always appeals to me in a novel.
The novel centres around Matt, a successful actor and who's girlfriend, Tracy, is an equally successful swimwear model. They both jet around the world to various filming and modelling locations and seem to be living the American dream.
However, Matt's whole world is turned upside down upon the discovery of a painting which belonged to his family in prewar Hungary. This proves to be the opening of a whole can of worms for Matt as he seeks to make sense of the past and which forces him to confront the difficulties he has in his relationship with his father.
Matt is a very complex character and his father is equally so. Matt knows little of his fathers past, a deliberate act on the part of his father to spare his son from the horrors he experienced in Hungary during the war at the hands of the Nazi's.
For Matt the painting comes to embody a life and faith that he feels his father has denied him. The relationship between Matt and his father were the kingpin in this novel for me. We see his father through Matt's eyes and are able to sympathise with him. However, Tracy's communications with him enable us to see him from her perspective and it made me question how reliable Matt's view of his father was. It was certainly a very complex relationship and it was this that made this novel so gripping for me. As a reader, I was longing for a reconnection between them and it was this hope that kept me enthralled by this book.
It is a very intelligently written novel and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I will definitely be reading this authors other work, Harry, Revised.
ISBN: 978 037420637
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
About the Author:
Mark Sarvas is the author of the novel Harry, Revised, which was published in more than a dozen countries around the world. His book reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, Bookforum, and many other publications. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, PEN America, and PEN Centre USA, and teaches novel writing at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. A reformed blogger, he lives in Santa Monica, California.
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