The Notebook Trilogy 

By Agota Kristof 

Published in 1986, 1991, and 1996

This edition published in 1997 by Grove Atlantic

What starts out as a kind of dark fairy tale quickly turns into much more. Twin brothers Claus and Lucas are left to be raised by their grandmother, a more worldly  version of the wicked-witch archetype, in the midst of a war that separates them from the rest of their family. They have to adjust to their grandmother’s strange customs, living in a house apart from a nearby village. They have visits from an officer and priest that help expand their worldview and give glimpses of some of the goings on in the world at large. It’s not specified with great detail, but they are surrounded by war and danger and live under this constant threat. 

After the death of their father, one of the brothers leaves, Claus, to the country beyond the border and this leaves Lucas to find a life for himself, beyond his grandmother, in the town nearby. And he does this, learning of an orphanage and book shop where he takes comfort. He slowly and painfully forms relationships with a couple of people and starts to dig into the mysteries of his own past. He reads journals and begins questioning his own existence, what is real, who he is, and what any of it could possibly mean, realizing that his own memory has been colored and draped with fantasy because he cannot face the realities of what has happened: “I answer that I try to write true stories but that at a given point the story becomes unbearable because of its very truth, and then I have to change it. I tell her that I try to tell my story but all of a sudden I can’t – I don’t have the courage, it hurts too much. And so I embellish everything and describe things not as they happened but the way I wish they had happened.” (345)

Finally, Lucas sets off to confront his brother to get answers for some of the confusing/muddled aspects of their lives, to find some meaning in their separation and in their writings. It is this last piece that really makes all three books work in a way that transcends what might normally be something middle of the road. Instead, this third part changes the narrative, shifting identity, perspective, and reality to make everything that has come before carry a weight that it didn’t initially have, forcing you to bear the truth or lack of truth as held up against the realities of war and pain and human suffering, the narrator musing “I go to bed and before falling asleep I talk to Lucas in my head the way I have for many years. What I tell him is just about what I usually do. I tell him that if he’s dead he’s lucky and I’d very much like to be in his place. I tell him that he got the better deal, that it is I who is pulling the greater weight. I tell him that life is totally useless, that it’s nonsense, an aberration, infinite suffering, the invention of a non-God whose evil surpasses understanding.” (471) It is such a great trick, one that I’ve seen in several multi-part books, most recently with Cormac McCarthy’s last, and it works spectacularly here. 

Heavy Lit rating: Highly Recommended

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