PositiveBookslutThe hazard of intimacy between female friends lies at the throbbing, telltale heart of The Door ... [the] constant cycling between fury and reconciliation approaches comedy, and perhaps becomes somewhat tiresome, over the course of the novel. Yet Magda's despair at the friendship's premature end befits its intensity, in moments of both ecstatic affection and torturous disappointment. Within the pages of Szabó's macabre novel is an honest depiction of the chasm women ask one another to cross in emotionally intimate friendships -- beyond the fear of betrayal and abandonment, into absolute, unprotected empathy.
