Book of the Month: Valeria's Last Stand, by Marc Fitten

You don't have to know Hungary to feel at home in Zivatar, the perennially overlooked village that is the setting for Marc Fitten's delightful debut novel, Valeria's Last Stand. This stripped-down modern-day fairy tale depicts Zivatar as a place where not much new happens—until one fateful day when the town grump, 68-year-old Valeria, sees the elderly village potter as if for the first time, and is thunderstruck with love. As is he. Much of the charm of this tale lies in the portrayal of Zivatar, a place so far off the beaten track that German tanks (during WWII), Russian tanks (during the 1956 revolution), and even the modern highway all ignore it. In this marvelously mundane outpost, life revolves around three places: the market, where traditional carrots, turnips, rutabagas, tomatoes, parsley, pears, and asparagus lately share space with Valencia oranges, California red peppers, Chinese boom boxes, and German cassettes; Ibolya's Nonstop Tavern, the wood and cinderblock pub where exhausted farmers find smoke-saturated, beer-fueled rejuvenation away from field and hearth; and the new train station that the ambitious, younger-generation mayor hopes will bring the world to his domain. The tale's other charm is the simple love story at its heart—Valeria, a woman who has steadfastly shut herself off from passion for almost half a century, tumbling like a schoolgirl for the widowed, white-haired potter, who finds in this unexpected thaw a fount of artistic inspiration. The transformations their love unlocks echo other evolutions at work in the town: the transitions from farm to factory, bicycle to Mercedes, and communism to capitalism. Valeria's Last Stand offers an enchanting introduction to 1990s Hungary—a country, like the village and the couple Fitten so engagingly portrays, re-creating itself in the cradle of change.