Monday, August 01, 2011

The Sixth Lamentation Book Review

The Sixth Lamentation
by William Brodrick
The Sixth Lamentation, published July 26, 2004, was the August selection for my Seasoned Readers Book Club. I read that the author, William Brodrick, was a Franciscan friar before leaving the order to become a practicing barrister. His character in the story, Father Anselm, has done just the opposite and serves as the narrator as such, going back and forth between the telling of the history and current trial and lives of the present generation. He weaves the church’s involvement into the Nazi war crimes suspects lives as they seek sanctuary in his Suffolk priory and learns they had been housed directly after the war as they escaped and assumed new identities to avoid prosecution.  
The author notes his own family history that inspired the story including his mother’s attempt to smuggle an infant during the war, her arrest by the Gestapo and ultimate death from motor neurone disease in 1989. As a history laden thriller full of twists, turns, moving through time between occupied France and modern day England, it keeps you glued to what comes next.
The heroine Agnes Aubret writes her history in a simple notebook, knowing her life will end with terminal motor neuron disease, and wanting her granddaughter Lucy to know the stories she can not speak of aloud. Lucy, reads about her grandmother’s past in Occupied Paris as a member of a resistance group that smuggled Jewish Children to safety. Her story takes on a new life as Schwermann, a Nazi criminal is brought to trial all these many years later in London.  
Father Anselm researches the heroic French resistance fighters of the Round Table, a group of students who attempted to rescue thousands of Jewish children. He weaves a story together that is never quite what it seems on the surface. Friends turned collaborators, babies adopted by conspirators, confusion over who died in death camps and who survived add up to an unfolding story filled with intrigue.
Brodrick writes well with a touch of prose to enhance the mood and bring this tragic story of tremendous loss of so many during the war to a bittersweet climax that brought tears and heartwarming satisfaction.
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