<\/p>\n
Under Budapest
\n<\/i>by Ailsa Kay
\nFredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2013
\n264 pp, $19.65<\/p>\n
The Ontario-based author Ailsa Kay fell in love with Budapest on a visit nine years ago. She stayed on searching beyond the Hungarian city\u2019s post-Communist surface for the essence of the \u2018Magyar\u2019 people. The result is her first novel spiced with suspense and history and with characters who linger on in the reader\u2019s imagination when the story ends.<\/p>\n
Three storylines collapse into the finale. We are grabbed at the outset with the \u201cinnocent\u201d night-time prowlings of Janos, a young man of Hungarian birth, who has lived a sheltered life growing up in Toronto. He is with an old childhood friend, Csaba and foolishly wanders into the dark side of Budapest. An accidental witness to Janos\u2019 grisly fate is Tibor Roland. A central character, Tibor, like the reader, must put together the puzzling plotline as each piece comes to light. He is an academic born in Toronto and appears to lack a meaningful personal life, depicted in a love affair. His widowed mother, Agnes (nee Tiglas), a Hungarian \u00e9migr\u00e9, has the potential to help Tibor know himself. He has already been exploring her repressed memories in the guise of academic research. An opportunity arrives for the pair to visit Budapest. It is the eve of the 2010 election in a country now independent but still recovering from the long repressive Soviet-era-model Communist regime after the Second World War. And it is on his early morning jog from his hotel to Gellert Hill, that Tibor witnesses a crime.<\/p>\n
The third plot is set in Budapest, 1956. Agnes\u2019 father is among the many arbitrarily imprisoned by the government. Her mother is convinced he is somewhere below the city in a tunneled prison. Meantime, the time for rebellion arrives. Agnes is caught up in a march in the first hopeful days: \u201cIn this whispering city, people yell, \u201cNow or never.\u201d And the urban landscape of Budapest is always a beloved constant : \u201cThey keep walking, and the swell carries her, and the bridge miraculously holds as the evening sun lights the Duna on fire.\u201d There are mass protests, fighting in the streets and the Communist rulers appear to be willing to negotiate.<\/p>\n
Agnes escapes to Austria before the government closes the border and the violent reprisals begin. Her boyfriend and revolutionary leader, Gyula Farkas is captured and imprisoned. What happens to her sister, Zsofi who remains to fight with Gyula, insisting he loves her, not Agnes, is a central question of the novel.<\/p>\n
Few tender moments occur between the people of Budapest\u2014past or present. The author pulls no punches as she depicts callous brutality from top to bottom. That there is the potential for cruelty beneath a civilized veneer is a note of warning Agnes tries to impress on her Canadian-born son. The youthful Agnes also tries to warn her idealistic sister and boyfriend to escape Hungary before the crackdown, to no avail. What does bind both dreamers and pragmatists in Budapest is the belief\u00a0 that tunnels exist beneath the city; that people are both imprisoned and freed within them. The author succeeds in her compelling novel, Under Budapest<\/i>, to reveal much of what lies beneath. As her deftly woven story illustrates for the current generation, the past is rich in stories, secrets and lessons.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Ballad of Jacob Peck
\n<\/i>by Debra Komar
\nFredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2013
\n258 pp, $19.95<\/p>\n
A true crime set in the Maritimes and passed down through the generations in song, novel and journalism, \u201cThe Ballad of Jacob Peck\u201d may have reached its final destination with this definitive re-telling. Debra Komar, a forensic scientist and international human rights investigator, digs deep into archival documents to explore the grisly murder in 1805 of Mercy Hall by her brother Amos Babcock at his home near Shediac, New Brunswick. Babcock was soon arrested, tried in a court of law and given the death penalty. His crime was committed under \u201cGod\u2019s instructions\u201d from itinerant preacher Jacob Peck. Yet Peck was not held accountable and the author wants to know why.<\/p>\n
The late Canadian musician, John Bottomley, wrote a haunting 1992 ballad of the same title. His lyrics inspired Komar and prefaces this book. Peck could \u201cwhip you into a frenzy at his mad house revival parties,\u201d Bottomley wrote. Mercy Hall was \u201cof melancholy disposition\u201d and, Babcock\u2019s wife and nine children watched in horror as \u201cBabcock drew a knife and sharpened it\u201d before committing the heinous deed against Hall. Komar\u2019s careful and well-sourced version of these events moves artfully from the present – as the author describes her research – to the past, with its rural landscape of snowbanks on a dark winter\u2019s night. Komar also makes note of a \u201cbroken telephone\u201d of errors and misconceptions as the story was re-told down the generations. She is clearly after the truth.<\/p>\n
The author\u2019s frustration over gaps in historical records, such as discarded trial witness statements, is compensated for by her ability to nevertheless vividly re-construct the crime and its aftermath in a frontier colonial society populated with interesting and sometimes colorful people. The humble status of the farming people depicts the fragility of their existence. Babcock, poor and illiterate for instance, did not have a defense lawyer for his own trial; a consequence of his crime included the confiscation of property by the government. This left his wife and children destitute.<\/p>\n
More information is available about William Hanington, a prosperous man from whom Babock rented a small house and a piece of land. Lawyers and judges involved in Babock\u2019s trial also left a thicker paper trail and are more easily researched. Their education, wealth and family connections gave them considerable influence – and responsibility – over the lives of others, as this story underlines.<\/p>\n
No one, rich or poor, escapes the author\u2019s scrutiny. Take for example, Robert Keillor, the town jailor at the Dorchester Courthouse and owner of the tavern situated above the jail. Though he was of good family stock, Keillor was \u201csomething of a drinking man.\u201d As Babcock\u2019s keeper, Keillor got to know him well and Keillor\u2019s testimony at the murder trial would prove to be significant. Another person not to be overlooked was Babcock\u2019s cellmate, John Jerome. His destiny became darkly entwined with Babcock\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Finally there is the elusive Jacob Peck. His role in the crime, based on evidence provided, is left for the reader to determine. At story\u2019s end, however, there is much more than Peck\u2019s malignant spirit to ponder in this richly woven tale from Canada\u2019s past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fiction and Historical Crime Under Budapest by Ailsa Kay Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2013 264 pp, $19.65 The Ontario-based author Ailsa Kay fell in love with Budapest on a visit nine years ago. She stayed on searching beyond the Hungarian city\u2019s post-Communist surface for the essence of the \u2018Magyar\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1385,"parent":93,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-704","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1333,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/704\/revisions\/1333"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}