Book 4: Utas és holdvilág by Szerb Antal

"Anxious to please his bourgeois father, Mihály has joined the family firm in Budapest. Pursued by nostalgia for his bohemian youth, he seeks escape in marriage to Erzsi, not realising that she has chosen him as a means to her own rebellion. On their honeymoon in Italy, Mihály 'loses' his bride at a provincial station and embarks on a chaotic and bizarre journey that leads him finally to Rome. There all the death-haunted and erotic elements of his past converge, and he, like Erzsi, has finally to make a choice."

I am too lazy to write my own synopsis, so this time I decided to steal borrow one from amazon.

 I finished this book about two months ago, so my experiences are not as fresh, but I am still comfortable to state that I did not like Utas és holdvilág. It was my first reading by Szerb Antal; I had no previous knowledge of him or of the book, all I knew was that it's a famous and internationally recognized novel, and it made it into the Top 100 books in A Nagy Könyv competition in 2005.

I did not get this book. I know it's about rebelling against the situation you got trapped in, standing up one day, leaving it all behind, going on a journey, facing the past, your issues and biggest fears, figuring things out and finding yourself by the end. I probably read this book at a wrong time, when I am in a different period of my life, or I rushed through it too fast, because it just did not get to me. I most certainly would not say that it was bad (since who am I to say that such a highly praised author as Szerb Antal wrote a bad book?), but neither would I say that I liked it. It awoke no emotions in me, I neither liked nor disliked the characters, I did not cheer for them, I simply did not care how their path would turn out, they left me cold. As a matter of fact, the entire book left me cold. I do know what the message was supposed to be, how I was supposed to feel, but I just did not get it and did not feel that way. There was no lesson to me that I could draw from this story. I neither feel that I have become more because I read Utas és holdvilág, nor am I taking anything from the book. 

Did you read it? What did you take away from it? How come it is so popular and highly praised? 

I should probably go back to it in a few years and give it another try, I might get it then, at that period of my life. 

Or should I try other books by Szerb Antal?