Joseph Machlis (1906–1998)

Stefan in Love, set in Budapest and New York, follows the life of a middle-age journalist who falls in love with a woman half his age. The time is the late 1980s, the Glasnost period during which Soviet satellite states began flexing their muscles and enjoying greater freedoms. Stefan is a survivor of the 1956 Hungarian uprising who lost his closest friend when the Soviets quashed the protests with tanks and guns, and who has since become disillusioned with Communism. He is also disillusioned in other aspects of his life, particularly at home, where his relationship with his son Vadim is strained, and where his wife Anna, resentful of his many extra-marital liaisons, does not bother to hide her disappointment in both him and their marriage. When Stefan spots Ileana sitting at a table at an outdoor café he is smitten and, despite the huge difference in their ages, seduces her and they begin an affair. Over several months their intimacy becomes profound, and when she decides to leave Hungary to pursue opportunities in America, he uproots himself and follows her. In New York Ileana's youth enables her to seamlessly adapt to her new home and language, while Stefan is unable to keep up. When she is discovered by a fashion designer and embarks on a lucrative career as a model, he finds himself on the outside of her life looking in, emotionally and financially dependent on her at the same time that she is realizing she no longer needs him. Joseph Machlis has written an enjoyable fast-paced narrative that is suspenseful, emotionally authentic and compulsively readable. The settings are rendered in evocative fashion, with the scenes in old-world Budapest especially atmospheric and memorable. Stefan’s powerlessness to change Ileana’s mind when she decides she must cut herself loose from him takes on tragic overtones as his desperation grows and reason abandons him. In this, his fourth novel, Joseph Machlis has given us a portrait of the two faces of love that is gripping and poignant.… (mais)