Civil unrest in the Middle East has been in the news these last few weeks. In unconscious sympathy, I read two war novels this week, Birdsong, a tale of WWI, and The 6th Lamentation, a WWII story.
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| Courtesy amazon.ca |
Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong is a haunting story of love among the ruins.†
The tale begins in 1910 with orphan Stephen Wraysford's arrival in the Somme town of Amiens on a mission to learn about the local textile trade for his English employer. Stephen next proceeds to do the unthinkable -- accepting the hospitality of a local family, then falling in love with the woman of the house, Isabelle Azaire, and convincing her to run away with him.
However, as with Tolstoy's heroine, Anna Karenina, Isabelle's guilt drives her to abandon the young Englishman.
Fast forward to 1916 and the Battle of the Somme (1 July to 18 November). Stephen has returned to England to enlist in the Great War to fight for his home country, rather than for the French. His education and fearlessness quickly lead to promotion out of the ranks.
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| Battle landscape on a good day. Image courtesy cwgc.org, image #42 |
Yet what his superiors fail to see is that Stephen's belief in never having been loved has lead him to take the military propaganda -- be blood thirsty towards the enemy -- to heart. He focuses all his energy towards avoiding connections to his fellows and lives to kill.
Most of the book is concerned with survival amid the unspeakable horrors and agony of life in the trenches. However, interwoven with this is the "contemporary" (1970s) story of Elizabeth Bensen, a solitary woman in search of information about the grandfather she never knew -- Stephen Wraysford.
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| Courtesy amazon.ca |
Nevertheless, the story ends on a positive note. It's a vindication of sorts -- the atonement so missing from Ian McEwan's excellent love story Atonement and equally compelling film version with James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. So, despite the crushing gloom, Birdsong does deserve its BBC best book ranking.
After reading Birdsong, William Broderick's mystery thriller The 6th Lamentation* was almost a breeze. I picked it up a few weeks ago because the title rang a bell. It certainly didn't disappoint. Agnes Aubret, failed mother and slightly more successful grandmother has a secret that's been gnawing away at her soul for fifty years. She's just been diagnosed with motor neuron disease with only a short time to live. So her granddaughter, Lucy, may understand the origins of the fault lines within the family, Agnes decides to dictate her story.
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| Courtesy amazon.co.uk |
Father Anselm, monk and former hack lawyer, has a story too. A story to track down. For he's the Vatican's chosen investigator into the claims of suspected Nazi war criminal, Edouard Schwermann, who recently demanded sanctuary at Anselm's home priory.
Schwermann claims he's innocent and to back this up he cites his having been received sanctuary at this same priory and then smuggled into England at the end of the war. With the blessing of the authorities he began a new life under a new name. The justification? As an SS officer based in occupied France, he helped smuggle Jewish children to safety.
Every survivor connected to the running of this smuggling operation has something to hide, but they appear to have one belief in common -- fellow smuggler Agnes and her child perished in the concentration camps. It's up to Lucy to decide what to divulge during Schwermann's trial.
I quite enjoyed this book. While still dark, its mood was considerably lighter than that of Birdsong. And while it remains true to the theme of senselessly wasted lives, there is more joy to its ending.
I'd say Birdsong's is the greater book, but Lamentation the easier read.
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| Courtesy amazon.ca |
Should you enjoy Sebastian Faulks' writing, you might be interested in the current BBC2 4-part series, Faulks on Fiction, and the accompanying BBC publication Faulks on Fiction: Great British Characters and the Secret Life of the Novel. Each episode of the series focuses (sequentially) on the Hero, Lover, Snob and Villain.
If you want more of Father Anselm, try Broderick's murder mystery The Gardens of the Dead and A Whispered Name, a novel of the 1917 Passchendaele campaign.
Notes
† Apologies to Browning, Waugh and Burne-Jones.
* The book explains that the Bible contains five Lamentations and that the Holocaust may be considered a sixth.
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