It is 1900, give or take a few years. The Vajkays-call them Mother & Father-live in Sarszeg, a dead-end burg in the provincial heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Father retired some years ago to devote his days to genealogical research & quaint questions of heraldry. Mother keeps house. Both are utterly enthralled with their daughter, Skylark. Unintelligent, unimaginative, unattractive, & unmarried, Skylark cooks & sews for her parents & anchors the unremitting tedium of their lives. Now Skylark is going away, for only a week it`s true, but a week that yawns endlessly for her parents. What will they do? Before they know it, they are eating at restaurants, reconnecting with old friends, attending the theater. & this just a prelude to Father`s night out at the Panther Club, about which the less said the better. Drunk, in the light of dawn, Father surprises himself & Mother with his true, buried, unspeakable feelings about Skylark. Then, Skylark is back. Is there a world elsewhere, beyond life`s daily monotonous grind & creeping disappointment? Not only for Mother & Father, but for Skylark, too? This question is unanswerable, but the crystalline prose, perfect comic timing, & profound human sympathy that make Dezso Kosztolanyi one of the masters of European literature conjure up a tantalizing beauty that lies on the far side of the irredeemably ordinary. To that extent, Skylark is nothing less than a magical book.