Friday, April 13, 2018

IN THE DARKROOM




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In the Darkroom, Susan Faludi, Henry Holt and Company, 2016, 417 pp
 
 
Susan Faludi has been has an award winning journalist, has written an acclaimed nonfiction work, Backlash, and is an all around intelligent woman. I knew the name but not much else. Thanks to my reading group, The Bookie Babes, I have now read her.
 
In the Darkroom is part memoir, part inquiry into the meaning of identity, part Hungarian history. Some of the reading group members found it overstuffed and I can't disagree. I also however found it moving as a memoir, thoughtful as to gender identity, and informative on Hungarian history.

Susan Faludi had an unhappy childhood, thanks to her father. He was moody, overbearing, and violent at times. He left her and her mother when Susan was a teen, leaving her with harbored resentment, grievances and hurt for many years. When she learned that he had undergone sex reassignment surgery at the age of 76, she began an investigation into his life. Though her father had been a successful photographer for the fashion and magazine industry in New York, he had returned to Budapest, Hungary, the city of his birth. Though the parent and daughter had maintained a relationship and correspondence, it was strained to say the least.

Many visits to Hungary ensued. Susan took a dual role as daughter and investigative reporter and gradually brought the hidden life of her now female father into view, much the way he had developed pictures in his darkroom. During those visits, it was most unsettling to read sentences like, "My father, she..." Also interesting to learn that Hungarian has no gender specific pronouns!

Though the story contains many emotions, the underlying theme is tragedy due to the horrific circumstances of the senior Faludi's childhood in Hungary under the Nazis and then under Communism. Even to this day the country is a political mess and antisemitism is rife. Susan's father was born Jewish but learned to survive by subterfuge and the ability to assume different identities.

The book is necessarily in part a study of the transgender phenomenon primarily through the views of psychiatry and medicine. I found that the least convincing aspect of the story. Her research seemed well done but came across as dry theories, not all of them credible to me. When she finally wove the whole tapestry together, the issues of identity, gender, war, loss and survival as played out in the life of one Jewish man who chose to become a woman, it developed into a deeply moving and personal story. 

Take a chance on a book, as we say in the Bookie Babes.


(In the Darkroom is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

9 comments:

  1. I've never read any books by Susan Faludi, but I've long admired her writing in magazines and such. It's interesting to learn more about her background and what made her who she is. We are, all of us, the sum of our parts and of our experiences.

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    1. I am now interested in reading her feminist books. What you say about all of us is so true!

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  2. Wow this seems to have a lot in it. I didn't realize it was about her father, at the age of 76, having that done, oh my ... and the tragedy he suffered during WWII. Eye-opening.

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    1. Oh my is right. It was quite a story!

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  3. Sounds like an intriguing read. Another well done review on your part. Your book groups read some interesting books.

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    1. Thank you! My reading groups pick such good stuff. That is why I stay with them.

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  4. There was a lot going on with the father underneath, from what you say. It sounds like a powerful reading. Did she understand her father better after all her research and writing?

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    1. Yes, she did understand him/her better though sadly it did not bring her happiness. Well, how could it? Though I think her father did find some happiness after such a hard life.

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    2. Well, I don't think it was supposed to bring her happiness. Understanding and making peace with the past were the things that she could hope for. Her father, on the other hand, must have felt liberated after all those earth shattering events. Each of those events single handedly are enough to break anybody's spirit, just imagine to experience a wave of them over a lifetime.

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