‘Bed Table Door’: Csilla Toldy’s novel reminds us that living in darkness is only a choice
The protagonists Sofie and Samu’s untameable spirit in the face of adversity is a prescription for the human spirit in hard times.
Literature, time and again, reminds us why it matters beyond the conventions of time, race, and geography. In Csilla Toldy’s Bed Table Door, we realise this urgently as we turn page after page, learning about freedom. Set in Europe during the Cold War, Bed Table Door is a bittersweet story about chasing freedom in propaganda and reality, and what the pursuit of freedom could mean in rapidly changing contexts.
Sofie and Samu in Toldy’s gripping novel are two restless souls striving to escape the Iron Curtain in the hope that freedom would exist in geographies distant from those they grew up and felt stifled in. Having grown up in Hungary in the 1960s and 1970s, they meet each other and realise the oneness of their ambition, which is cemented by their developing love story and their clandestine involvement in resistance against the Hungarian state. Sofie escapes first and comes to Margaret Thatcher’s England braving police at borders and in the streets of England, where her uncle offers her a refuge and work to get by. Samu joins her later but their love frays slowly as Samu discovers his preference for men.
Relative freedoms
Throughout the evolution of their journey as a couple, their love speaks of an unbroken...
