Vatican City – She Reads Novels

The story of our Roman Escape Line has been characterised as a tale of courage. But it was always a story of friendship, first and last. The friends we knew and those we did not, some fleetingly encountered, others never at all. I am no sentimentalist, but I call it a love story.

This is the second book in Joseph O’Connor’s new trilogy inspired by the true story of the Rome Escape Line, a secret network that smuggled thousands of Jewish refugees and Allied soldiers out of Nazi-occupied Rome. The first novel, My Father’s House, introduces us to the work of the Escape Line who meet in the neutral Vatican under the guise of a choir to avoid the attentions of the Gestapo and focuses on one member in particular – Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, the Irish Catholic priest who is the leader of the network.

The Ghosts of Rome continues the story, beginning in February 1944, six months into the Nazi occupation. Although Hugh O’Flaherty is still part of the group, we see very little of him in this book as he steps into the background to let other characters’ stories be told. The main focus this time is the widowed Contessa Giovanna Landini, known as Jo, whose palazzo is commandeered by Gestapo officer Paul Hauptmann. Hitler isn’t satisfied with Hauptmann’s performance in Rome so far and he is under pressure to produce results. If he could obtain evidence of the Choir’s activities he’s sure that would help to improve his reputation with the Führer. Hauptmann hopes that the Contessa, whose house he is living in, will lead him to her fellow Escape Line members, but Jo is a resourceful woman and decides to take advantage of Hauptmann’s interest in her to try to protect herself and the Choir.

Another significant storyline revolves around a Polish airman who is shot down over Rome. Some members of the Escape Line want to help him, but others are more cautious. How can they be sure he is who he says he is? What if he betrays them? When it becomes obvious that he has life-threatening injuries and will die if not treated, they are faced with an important decision to make.

Of the two books, I think I preferred My Father’s House because it was more suspenseful, describing the countdown to a major mission on Christmas Eve, and because I found Hugh O’Flaherty such an interesting character. This is an excellent book as well, though, and I’m sure other readers will like it better than the first one. Although Jo Landini is at the forefront of the story, most of the characters we met in the previous book also reappear, including British Envoy Sir Francis D’Arcy Osborne, diplomat’s wife Delia Kiernan and escaped soldier Sam Derry. We also see a lot of Delia’s teenage daughter, Blon, who is angry when her mother leaves the Escape Line and insists on trying to take her place, which not everyone is happy about! These are all people who really existed, but O’Connor includes an author’s note to explain that the way they are portrayed in the book is just his interpretation and shouldn’t be relied on as fact.

If you haven’t read the previous novel, you’re probably wondering whether it’s necessary to have read it before starting this one. I would say it’s not really essential, but it would make it easier to follow what’s happening in this book. There are a lot of characters and O’Connor constantly switches between different perspectives throughout the novel, as well as inserting passages written in other styles – such as transcripts of (fictional) BBC interviews – which means you do need to pay attention otherwise it would be easy to lose track of things. As with My Father’s House, I was particularly interested in the insights we get into the mind of Paul Hauptmann – a very human villain, which just makes him all the more unsettling to read about. It’s the brave and tireless work of the Escape Line, however, that makes these novels so compelling; in this book, I loved the way they managed to hide hundreds of people inside a derelict old theatre right under the noses of the Gestapo.

This is a planned trilogy and although I can’t see any details of the third book yet, I know it will be something to look forward to!

Thanks to Harvill Secker for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Joseph O’Connor’s new novel My Father’s House, published in the UK today, is based on the true story of Hugh O’Flaherty, a Catholic priest who helped thousands of Jews and Allied prisoners of war to escape from Italy during World War II. This is the third book I’ve read by O’Connor (the others are Shadowplay, about the author Bram Stoker and the actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, and Ghost Light, which explores the relationship between the playwright John Millington Synge and the actress Molly Allgood) and I think it’s the best of the three.

The main part of the novel is set in 1943. Born and raised in Ireland, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty is serving in Vatican City during the war – a neutral territory within Nazi-occupied Rome. As an official Vatican visitor to Italy’s prisoner of war camps, Hugh has been trying to improve conditions for the prisoners, but his actions mark him out as an Allied sympathiser and his superiors prevent him from carrying out any more visits in case he makes the Vatican a Nazi target. However, Hugh won’t be stopped that easily and soon he has set up an Escape Line, successfully smuggling Jews and escaped prisoners out of Rome right under the eyes of the Nazis.

The biggest escape mission yet – the ‘Rendimento’ – has been arranged for Christmas Eve, 1943. In the hope that the Gestapo will be less vigilant on this particular night, Hugh and his group of courageous volunteers have put elaborate plans in place to move a large number of people out of the city under the cover of darkness. As we count down the days and hours leading up to the mission, we also get to know each member of Hugh’s team and how they came to be involved in the Escape Line.

The group use the cover of meeting for ‘choir practice’ and this is where they discuss their plans and receive their instructions – carefully coded, of course, as the Nazis have eyes and ears everywhere. One Nazi in particular is getting too close for comfort; he is Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann, who already has his eye on Hugh due to the camp visits and is starting to close in on the Choir and the Rendimento. But although Hauptmann is our villain, O’Connor gives him a surprising amount of depth, describing his home life and his relationship with his wife and children. This reminder that Nazi officers were often also family men leading normal domestic lives just makes Hauptmann’s behaviour feel even more chilling and shocking.

As the clock ticks down on Christmas Eve, the suspense increases as we are kept wondering whether the mission will succeed. However, the chapters describing the build-up to the Rendimento are interspersed with other chapters in which each member of the Choir introduces themselves and their background and tells us how they met Hugh and joined his group. I wasn’t very keen on this structure as I felt that it broke the flow of the story and took away some of the tension, but it was still interesting to hear their different voices (some of which I found more convincingly written than others). They included Sir D’Arcy Osborne, the British envoy to the Holy See, and his butler John May, diplomat’s wife Delia Kiernan, and escaped soldier Sam Derry – all of whom were real people.

I had never read anything about Hugh O’Flaherty and his work until now, so I’m pleased to have had the chance to learn something new. I see he was the subject of a 1983 film, The Scarlet and the Black, starring Gregory Peck, which I’ve never come across either. Although My Father’s House is a complete novel in itself, it’s apparently the first in an Escape Line trilogy – I’ll be looking out for the next one and will be interested to see if it’s going to focus on a different member of the group this time.

Thanks to Harvill Secker for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.