Title: Themes and Variations
Product review: Embers hearkens back to the time when great themes were conspicuously pondered in the context of fiction. Today, its absence of self-referential irony would appear fatal. Still, the novel itself is suffused with a Weltschmerz that approximates irony. The comparison to Thomas Mann is instructive here: Marai might be termed the Ironic Hungarian. Certainly, his tendency to speculate about meaning and every subtle variation therein links him to the great Central European tradition of fiction. His style is less bombastic than Mann's, however. The construction is spare and elegant and the language is stripped of rhetorical ornament. The novel functions best as an intellectual exercise, however, so anyone desiring fully developed characters, narrative flow, or crisis and catharsis might be disappointed.
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