László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

Right, okay, real quick, Krasznahorkai's second novel. It's about a town in Hungary undergoing vague intimations of apocalypse. When a circus that seems to feature no exhibits other than a big stuffed whale comes to town, people are worried that it means no good. And, as it happens, there's some mob violence that night, which is ultimately put down and authoritarian rule established in the town, as led by the awful Mrs. Eszter, whose fascist tendencies are illustrated by her tendency to sleep with authority figures. There's also her ineffectual husband, who obsesses about how awful and doomed humanity is, and his friend, the naive and somewhat simple-minded Valuska, with his mystical visions of the cosmos.

Look, that's about all, okay? It may just be that I wasn't quite in the right frame of mind to appreciate a novel like this, but I wasn't thrilled with The Melancholy of Resistance. To be honest, I'm really just writing this to note: I read it. 'Cause I totally did! But it seemed like maybe there wasn't that much there, and it didn't at all grab me in the way that Satantango did. Krasznahorkai certainly has a singular vision, and I'll probably end up reading his other novels one of these days, but that day is not today. THE END!