Signature Editions, 2008
Read by Keith Waterfield
Linda Leith’s most recent book, Marrying Hungary, is an autobiography of her marriage and subsequent divorce to a Hungarian refugee. The preface describes her very sweet relationship with ex-husband Andy and the times they shared together. She writes from a place of comfort and understanding, (unusual, at least among the divorced people I’ve known). Leith writes that her acceptance of this change in her life would not have been possible without her many experiences as an “outsider.” Born in Northern Ireland to Communist parents, Leith has lived in London, Basel, Brussels, Paris and Budapest, and has always worked hard at making the transition to new territory and new experiences.
This struggle is detailed throughout the book, as the story of her marriage and divorce is not complete without the story of her and her family’s lives. Leith understands that any one moment of life is attributed to everything else that has occurred prior. She outlines the struggles with her family and the harsh relationship with a father whom she both adored and feared; her obsession with literary classics (which was the precursor to her writing novels, editing magazines and founding festivals) and her attraction to Hungary (influenced by My Fair Lady); her 30 years plus marriage to her husband and the birth of their three sons.
What Leith has achieved is a book that is more than just an examination of a marriage’s success and failure. It is the autobiography of a writer and the kinds of changes that writers go through in a lifetime. It is a story about families and cultures which are so different from each other yet relatable and similar in terms of emotion. In Leith there is a constant need to question the idea of “home.” Is home a geographical location, an emotional connection, or a persona illusion? It is all and none for Leith, who is always forced to stand in at least two places at once:
I am a lifelong outsider, and my world consists of places that are both mine and not mine.
Leith focuses on the theme of the outsider — that preoccupation of so many literary greats — and draws the reader into an intimacy; she leaves nothing to be guessed. I was, in short, enthralled by Leith’s narration as she travels from childhood to her present with great style that seems to come easily to this talented writer.
