In this novel, everyone is an orphan. The little girl adopted in the late 1940s, her foster parents, her own child, her husband, all her relatives and acquaintances: without exception, everyone considers the lack of love to be the accepted, only livable condition. These people live their difficult lives in a dilapidated, crumbling, vegetable-smelling hallway, a stone’s throw from poverty and light years away from what is considered a normal life. Yet, suppressed emotions and passions occasionally erupt, and these flashpoints result in fateful moments. This oppressive and narrow, yet transparent world is the aquarium itself.
Krisztina Tóth mixes naturalism, irony and black humour with excellent proportion, cleansing this difficult-to-process period of our past, which strongly influences the collective unconscious, with ‘everyday catharsis’.
