My Father's House: From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Star of the Sea (The Rome Escape Line, 1)

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My Father’s House book review: Irish priest who defied Nazis My Father’s House book review: Irish priest who defied Nazis

The author’s sparing prose reflects the monotony of the coal merchant’s life, while capturing place and emotion to great effect.Hauptmann embodies something of the terrible paradoxes in the heart of Germany in the 1930s — cultured and brutal, urbane and ruthless.

My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor — rebel with a cause My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor — rebel with a cause

O’Connor is playing with the possibilities of multiple narrators, and thinking also about plurality, reliability and the historical record: is a collection of witnesses more accurate than a solo narrator? The gargantuan efforts undertaken to achieve this were documented in the 1983 film The Scarlet and the Black, starring Gregory Peck as O’Flaherty, and in Maj Sam Derry’s memoir The Rome Escape Line (1960), a letter from which is used by O’Connor as the epigraph of his novel.Above all, it is a book that resonates because it retells a true story of courage, compassion, and defiance in dark days. Fair enough, but it would have been helpful as an Author's Note at the beginning of the work and not at the end. It was based on what was known as the 'Rome escape line,' where people risked their lives to save thousands. The plan relies on his knowledge of secret passageways, tunnels and backstreets, and on the competence and integrity of the inner circle and their collaborators and double agents across Rome, all working under the immediate threat of torture, death and reprisals.

Book Review - My Father’s House - Joseph O’Connor Book Review - My Father’s House - Joseph O’Connor

There was indeed an Irish priest living in Vatican City involved in running an escape line for resistance fighters, escaped prisoners of war and Jewish people from Nazi-run Rome, and his collaborators share names and biographical details with characters in this book. Joseph O’Connor’s earlier work was instrumental in demonstrating that modern historical fiction can mean novels of ideas and the state of the nation rather than works of populist nostalgia. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. They include a widowed Italian countess, a flamboyant British diplomat to the Vatican and a Jewish Londoner jazz musician-turned-inspired scrounger, and they do actually sing at music rehearsals, conducted by the Monsignor.My Father’s House is inspired by the extraordinary true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who, together with his accomplices, risked his life to smuggle Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy right under the nose of his Nazi nemesis. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.