I found this at the Dollar Tree and thought it'd be a fun experiment in trying to read something without looking at reviews first. It had art history, Judaism, World War II drama—I should have loved it!

But this book is the definition of bloated, male drivel. I can't even gather my thoughts because it is so, so infuriating. The author tries so desperately to sound deep and complex and thoughtful, but it's... it's nothing. There's nothing to grab onto! It is turgid with meaningless metaphors, uncomfortable and needless male sexuality, and problems... that are not problems.

Maybe my life is so fucked up in comparison I just can't relate, but god. It all just reads like a man who thinks way too highly of himself had one coherent thought while not thinking of fucking something for 5 minutes and thought he'd write a book with new profound enlightenment. No, I don't care about the Christain cross between the woman you cheat on's tits. I want to learn about Kalman. Or the father. There is nothing of note in the main character's life. ( )

What a Son Doesn't Know about a Father

In Mark Sarvas’ Memento Park—a brilliantly rendered tale of alienated son and distant father set against the backdrop of the Holocaust and postwar art restitution, death and survival, and current waves of antisemitism, all wrapped in a mystery—people in Matt Santos’ (Americanized version of his Hungarian name Mátyás Szantos) life tell him in reference to his father: “Do not make the mistake of assuming that because you know what someone will do, that you know who they are.” It’s only in the end, after much personal tribulation, dredging and reevaluating memory, that Matt begins to understand the advice and comes to appreciate his father. Any readers who have had less than Rockwellian relationships with their fathers will recognize many of the emotions and situations portrayed by Sarvas, though probably not at this level of heightened drama.

Matt Santos lives in L.A. He works as a moderately successful bit-part actor. He is a Jew who knows practically nothing about Judaism. His fiancé, Tracy, a lithesome Nordic beauty who contrasts physically with him, works as a catalogue fashion model. They have a good life together, though Matt is nearly estranged from his father, with Tracy maintaining the good relationship with the father, Gabor. That all changes when Matt receives a call from the Australian consulate regarding a painting confiscated by the Nazi’s during WWII. It may belong to him, his family, and its value is in the millions. Why call him and not his father? They have contacted Gabor and he has told them he has no interest in the painting. Since Matt has always seen his father as a hustler, Gabor’s rejection of the valuable painting rightly mystifies him.

As the story opens, we meet Matt studying the painting, by a modernist and persecuted Hungarian Jewish artist, Ervin Laszlo KĂ lmĂ n (rendered very convincingly), who eventually committed suicide before being rounded up by the Arrow Cross (the Hungarian Nazi Party). Matt scrutinizes it for hours in advance of it going on the auction block, with the full knowledge of why his father rejected the painting, of his unknown family in Hungry, of his relationship with Tracy and his restitution lawyer, Rachel, who helped him seal his claim, and how his family hoped it would save them from the Arrow Cross.

This recollection of the weeks leading up to the hours in the gallery also remind readers of the Nazi persecutions and the desperate measures some took in hopes of survival. Readers, who may not be familiar with what took place in Hungry during the war and postwar as a Soviet client state, or perhaps even the current atmosphere in the country, get introduced to the Arrow Cross, to the monument to massacred Jews “Shoes on the Danube,” as well as the ill-fated Hungarian revolt of 1956 and Soviet domination when Matt and Rachel visit Memento Park, the giant outdoor art installation containing the grandiose statues of the Soviet era.

Additionally, while the novel doesn’t explore the topic of virulent antisemitism in contemporary Hungry in-depth, Sarvas does make readers acutely aware of its existence. Matt not only is trying to understand his father, he’s also connecting with being Jewish. As part of connecting, he personally experiences the antisemitic currents of modern Hungry when he attempts stopping young thugs from desecrating the “Shoes on the Danube.” He suffers a serve beating, landing him in the hospital to be confronted by an unsympathetic and antisemitic police inspector. In other words, what faced his parents and grandparents in old Hungry, what engendered the incident with the painting, to a degree it stills exists in Hungry, though readers will realize this as just one of many places, that include the U.S.

Matt always saw his father as a rather harsh and judgmental man because he was judgmental with Matt. But the father had lived through, bore scars greater than, Matt could imagine. Tracy and Rachel’s admonishment quoted at the top is why Matt couldn’t cut through the fog of his youth to really see his father, until the painting. He does, finally, and heeds one of his father’s often voiced commands, Pay Attention.
( )

What a Son Doesn't Know about a Father

In Mark Sarvas’ Memento Park—a brilliantly rendered tale of alienated son and distant father set against the backdrop of the Holocaust and postwar art restitution, death and survival, and current waves of antisemitism, all wrapped in a mystery—people in Matt Santos’ (Americanized version of his Hungarian name Mátyás Szantos) life tell him in reference to his father: “Do not make the mistake of assuming that because you know what someone will do, that you know who they are.” It’s only in the end, after much personal tribulation, dredging and reevaluating memory, that Matt begins to understand the advice and comes to appreciate his father. Any readers who have had less than Rockwellian relationships with their fathers will recognize many of the emotions and situations portrayed by Sarvas, though probably not at this level of heightened drama.

Matt Santos lives in L.A. He works as a moderately successful bit-part actor. He is a Jew who knows practically nothing about Judaism. His fiancé, Tracy, a lithesome Nordic beauty who contrasts physically with him, works as a catalogue fashion model. They have a good life together, though Matt is nearly estranged from his father, with Tracy maintaining the good relationship with the father, Gabor. That all changes when Matt receives a call from the Australian consulate regarding a painting confiscated by the Nazi’s during WWII. It may belong to him, his family, and its value is in the millions. Why call him and not his father? They have contacted Gabor and he has told them he has no interest in the painting. Since Matt has always seen his father as a hustler, Gabor’s rejection of the valuable painting rightly mystifies him.

As the story opens, we meet Matt studying the painting, by a modernist and persecuted Hungarian Jewish artist, Ervin Laszlo KĂ lmĂ n (rendered very convincingly), who eventually committed suicide before being rounded up by the Arrow Cross (the Hungarian Nazi Party). Matt scrutinizes it for hours in advance of it going on the auction block, with the full knowledge of why his father rejected the painting, of his unknown family in Hungry, of his relationship with Tracy and his restitution lawyer, Rachel, who helped him seal his claim, and how his family hoped it would save them from the Arrow Cross.

This recollection of the weeks leading up to the hours in the gallery also remind readers of the Nazi persecutions and the desperate measures some took in hopes of survival. Readers, who may not be familiar with what took place in Hungry during the war and postwar as a Soviet client state, or perhaps even the current atmosphere in the country, get introduced to the Arrow Cross, to the monument to massacred Jews “Shoes on the Danube,” as well as the ill-fated Hungarian revolt of 1956 and Soviet domination when Matt and Rachel visit Memento Park, the giant outdoor art installation containing the grandiose statues of the Soviet era.

Additionally, while the novel doesn’t explore the topic of virulent antisemitism in contemporary Hungry in-depth, Sarvas does make readers acutely aware of its existence. Matt not only is trying to understand his father, he’s also connecting with being Jewish. As part of connecting, he personally experiences the antisemitic currents of modern Hungry when he attempts stopping young thugs from desecrating the “Shoes on the Danube.” He suffers a serve beating, landing him in the hospital to be confronted by an unsympathetic and antisemitic police inspector. In other words, what faced his parents and grandparents in old Hungry, what engendered the incident with the painting, to a degree it stills exists in Hungry, though readers will realize this as just one of many places, that include the U.S.

Matt always saw his father as a rather harsh and judgmental man because he was judgmental with Matt. But the father had lived through, bore scars greater than, Matt could imagine. Tracy and Rachel’s admonishment quoted at the top is why Matt couldn’t cut through the fog of his youth to really see his father, until the painting. He does, finally, and heeds one of his father’s often voiced commands, Pay Attention.
( )

In an interview with Sarvas he describes his book in 280 characters or less as “A man tries to recover a looted painting that appears to have belonged to his family but in order to do so he must recover the lost story of his family, reconnect with his own neglected Judaism, and repair his broken relationship with his father.” This is a very apt, if concise, description of his enthralling novel. To be a little more elucidating, his main character, Matt Santos, becomes aware of a painting that he believes was looted from his family in Hungary during the Second World War. To recover the painting, he must repair his strained relationship with his harshly judgmental father, uncover his family history, and restore his connection to his own Judaism. The painting at the center of his personal drama is Budapest Street Scene, by Ervin Kalman.. Sarvas’ novel is as much about family history and father-son dynamics as it is about the nature of art itself. It illuminates the infinite ways we come to understand ourselves through this process.

"Memento Park" is a novel of identity and personal discovery that also explores the worlds of history, art and religion. These elements intersect in the story of Matt Santos, an American television and film actor of "B list" celebrity, of Hungarian Jewish heritage. In Mark Sarvas' telling, Santos narrates his journey to "Virgil", an unseen (by the readers) guide/companion who is an apparent reference to Dante's guide through his literary tour of Hell. In Matt Santos' case, his journey to the metaphorical netherworld involves: learning more about his father than he ever knew before; getting back in touch, both spiritually and literally, with Judaism and the heritage of his people; and visiting the scenes of his family's harrowing experience with the Holocaust in wartime Hungary.

The journey is precipitated by the unexpected news that Matt's family owns a painting called "Budapest Street Scene" that was the work of an Hungarian Jewish artist named Kalman who painted it in 1925 and sold it to Matt's grandfather. It apparently hung in the Szantos ("Santos" is the Americanized spelling) family apartment in Budapest for several years before the grandfather used it to obtain safe passage out of Hungary in 1944, after the Nazis occupied the country and began rounding up the Jews. For some unexplained reason, Matt's father does not want to claim the painting. This puzzles Matt, who knows his dad as something of a cheapskate. In following the story, we learn of his father's hobby/obsession, collecting, showing and selling toy cars. When Matt was a kid, he was not allowed to play with, let alone touch, the cars. They were not for him. This is one of the issues with his old man that he has to work out.

In the case of the painting, the legal work is done by a prestigious Los Angeles law firm and the attorney assigned to it happens to be an attractive and very intelliegent young Jewish woman named Rachel. She and her father, who is very religious, encourage Matt, gently, in his exploration of his Jewishness. This is complicated by his relationship with his shiksa girlfriend Tracy, a model who also does volunteer work on behalf of death row convicts. Tracy, the Protestant Barbie, has an affectionate relationship with Matt's gruff old Jewish father, which baffles him (Matt) but which he later comes to appreciate.

The title of the novel refers to an actual place outside Budapest where the Hungarians have collected all their old Stalinist statuary in a kind of pseudo-nostalgic theme park. Matt and Rachel visit it while they are in Hungary doing research to validate his claim to the painting. In the process, they learn that today's Hungary shares some of the darkness that troubled it when Matt's family had to flee in 1944. ( )