Flesh A novel

Review by Booklist Review

István doesn't know if he meant to kill his lover's husband. A teenager in Hungary, he has been slowly seduced by an older woman in his apartment building, and he is both disgusted and obsessed by their liaisons during stolen afternoons. When a scuffle ends with the woman's husband falling down concrete stairs to his death, it's the start of years of trouble for István, who becomes something of a bystander to his own life. After serving time in a young offenders' institution, drug running, and serving a stint in the army, István moves to London, where he works as a security driver for sixtysomething Mr. Nyman and his much younger wife. István and Mrs. Nyman begin having an affair, which leads István to Munich and, much later, to another brush with the law as accusations are hurled, and hatred, greed, and grief come together in a potent mix. Spare and unflinching, Szalay's (Turbulence, 2019) sixth work of fiction digs deep into the loneliness and disconnections that can exist within our closest relationships.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Szalay (Turbulence) offers a heartbreaking and revelatory portrait of a taciturn Hungarian man who serially attempts to build a new life after his traumatic adolescence. At 15, István struggles with adjusting to a new town in Hungary. After a married neighbor coerces him into sex, they regularly see each other until they're caught by her husband, whom István accidentally kills by knocking him down the stairs. He's sent to juvenile detention. Once out, he joins the army and fights in the Iraq War, where a good friend dies in an ambush and he feels responsible. István then tries to start over in London, finding work first as a bouncer at a strip club, then as a driver and security guard for a wealthy family. As the gritty narrative unfolds, István presents himself as little more than a hunk of flesh, preyed upon by married women who are hungry for something missing from their own lives. The propulsive narrative is heavy on dialogue, in which István regularly responds with a simple "okay" to questions about how he's doing, though Szalay makes clear that István is far from okay. Near the end, István is forced to make a difficult moral choice, and the outcome starkly reveals the degree to which his life is shaped by fate. This tragedy will leave readers in awe. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Apr.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Scenes from the life of a well-off but emotionally damaged man. Szalay's sixth novel is a study of István, who as a 15-year-old in Hungary is lured into a sexual relationship with a married neighbor; when he has a confrontation with the woman's husband, the man falls down the stairs and dies. Add in stints in a juvenile facility and as a soldier in Iraq, and István enters his 20s almost completely stunted emotionally. (Saying much besides "Okay" sometimes seems utterly beyond him.) Fueled by id, libido, and street drugs, he seems destined to be a casualty until, while working as a bouncer at a London strip club, he helps rescue the owner of a security firm who's been assaulted; soon, he's hired as the driver for a tycoon and his wife, with whom he begins an affair. István is a fascinating character in a kind of negative sense--he's intriguing for all the ways he fails to confront his trauma, all the missed opportunities to find deeper connections. To that end, Szalay's prose is emotionally bare, deliberately clipped and declarative, evoking Istvan's unwillingness (or incapacity) to look inside himself; he occasionally consults with a therapist, but a relentless passivity keeps him from opening up much. His capacity to fail upwards eventually catches up with him, and the novel becomes a more standard story about betrayal and inheritances, but it also turns on small but meaningful moments of heroism that suggest a deeper character than somebody who, as someone suggests, "exemplif[ies] a primitive form of masculinity." István's relentlessly stony approach to existence grates at times--there are a few too many "okay"s in the dialogue--but Szalay's distanced approach has its payoffs. Being closed off, like István, doesn't close off the world, and at times has tragic consequences. An emotionally acute study of manliness. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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