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

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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Hauptmann embodies something of the terrible paradoxes in the heart of Germany in the 1930s — cultured and brutal, urbane and ruthless. He brings his family with him, living a troubling double life as a dealer of arbitrary death and a father. At times, you have to stop to think hard about what is happening, because it is so awful and yet, in the story, mundane. The narrative moves on, but someone’s torture is beginning, or their life ends. Towards the end of the book, that gap shuts horribly as, casually and meaninglessly, Hauptmann executes someone whom we thought he liked. O’Flaherty and Hauptmann are consciously set up as rivals in scenes reminiscent of the film Heat. Both men are haunted by the possibility of failure and driven by how much rests on their success. Or take Delia Kiernan, a famed singer in Ireland before becoming wife of the senior Irish diplomat to the Vatican, recalling her first meeting with O’Flaherty: “His means of transport that night was his motorcycle. J oseph O’Connor’s Shadowplay won novel of the year at the 2019 Irish book awards and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel award. He also writes stage and screenplays, short stories, nonfiction and radio diaries. This formidable talent for writing across genres is reflected in his masterly 10th novel, which should reap similar plaudits.O’Connor achieves this balance partly through characterisation and voices strong enough that we eagerly follow them through uncertainty, mundanity and disappointment as well as high-stakes jeopardy. The novel is built out of the present-tense close third-person narrative of the priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, the technique historical fiction owes to Hilary Mantel, interspersed with fictional interviews conducted for a radio programme in 1963 with the seven people running the escape line under Hugh’s direction. All have distinctive and often very funny voices: they are Irish, English, Italian, aristocrats and shopkeepers.

Above all, it is a book that resonates because it retells a true story of courage, compassion, and defiance in dark days. (Readers who enjoy the story will find an excellent bibliography at the end of the novel to find out more about O’Flaherty.)Any writer worth their salt can do the research and present the facts. Where My Father’s House really shines is in O’Connor’s assembly of the material and his ventriloquistic way with voice. From the map of Rome and the Vatican at the beginning that locates the action, to the classical three-act structure, to a central narrative that moves forward in time over one momentous day, there is a clear sense of authority, a composer at work. In the hands of a less experienced writer, the many metafictional devices – unpublished memoirs, letters, transcripts from BBC interviews, among others – could confuse or detract from the story. O’Connor keeps an admirable command of the various strains and voices, some fictional, others, such as the British diplomat Sir D’Arcy Osborne, drawn from reality. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.

MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. It is 1943. Italy is slowly being liberated by American and Commonwealth forces, but Rome is still occupied. People are hidden away by Mgr Hugh O’Flaherty and his network of friends, until it seems that you can’t open a coal cellar without finding a roomful of British soldiers. (In reality, O’Flaherty’s network is credited with saving nearly 7000 lives.)

Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? 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. Writing about second world war espionage and resistance is brave in this context – there are so many gold-lettered tales of homosocial derring-do sold to men in airports – but anyone buying My Father’s House with this expectation will find themselves expected to think as well as fantasise. Joseph O’Connor’s new novel, based on the extraordinary true story of an Irish priest in the Vatican who helped to save thousands of prisoners during the Nazi occupation of Rome, is a riveting tale about the power of community in the face of unfathomable evil. The Escape Line, headed by Msgr Hugh O’Flaherty, was responsible for saving in the region of 6,500 Allied soldiers and Jews during the second World War. The book concludes with a deep study of great Christian themes, concerning love and repentance and sacraments. What does it mean at the end that Hugh baptises Hauptmann, but will not hear his confession?