My Father's House - Joseph O'Connor - ★★

AUTHOR: Joseph O'Connor

SERIES: Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1

GENRE: Historical Fiction

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical fiction based on the heroic acts of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and his “Choir” who helped smuggle Jews and other Allied prisoners out of Italy into the Vatican during WWII. Great research, but a tedious writing style that I simply couldn’t get into. This is an outlier review.

Plot Preview:

1943. Rome is occupied by the Germans, whose local boss is the dictatorial Obersturmbannführer named Paul Hauptmann. Providing help to allied prisoners and Jewish refugees in the independent Vatican nation are an Irish priest and his eclectic group of friends, who have only their objective in common.

This is based on true incidents, and is written in various points of view in varied grammatical voices.

Yet again, I raise a question I have asked multiple times previously. While rating such historical fiction works, are we rating the life of the person whose story we are reading, or are we rating the book? Monsignor O’Flaherty, along with his team members, deserves 5 stars for his work. But this book? Sorry! I struggled to focus on the story because there was absolutely nothing to motivate me to go on except the desire to know more about a brave priest. I should have stuck to Wikipedia.

Bookish Yays:

✔ Getting to know about an inspiring priest and his brave team.

✔ Some interesting, thought-provoking lines.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

💢 The writing style: Each of the members of the Monsignor’s team gets a first person narration talking about their WWII efforts from a future time. As these people come from a variety of backgrounds, their speech reflects their background and personality. This is brilliantly done, as the spoken content gives us an idea of the character's personality. But… and this is a big BUT… imagine the trouble shuffling through so many distinct writing styles within the same book. There is nothing to tie the whole plot together, and as the individual narrations aren’t even structured, the plot seems to hop from one idea to another. Moreover, the historical content (1943 timeline) is needlessly verbose in style, and randomly staccato in sentence structure.

Bookish Nays:

❌ The plot: Basically, this book takes a 10-page event and makes a 280-page book out of it. Considering that this is a story of rescues, it falls surprisingly flat. A lot of time goes in expositions than in action. Only the final section contains thrills. Cutting out the unnecessary content would have reduced this book to at least half its size.

❌ The framing: Imagine a person who is unwell and also under much stress as there are just a few hours left before the execution of a grand rescue plan. This person now decides to take some time out to pen down his will in the few minutes left before the zero hour. This “final will and testament” gives us extensive details of the events leading to that point, complete with dialogues. Eh? What will has such content?

❌ The fluff: The story would have flowed much better had it been linear and focussed mainly on O‘Flaherty. Instead, we get an over-detailed backstory of each of the team members, a lot of which has nothing to do with the core plot. A backstory of O’Flaherty would still have been fine, but that’s conspicuous in its absence.

❌ The plot development: All over the place! It is so jumpy that after a while, I gave up on understanding the sequence and just blindly read. What we get is a hodgepodge of the 7-8 (I lost count!) first person narrations from the 1960s, and a third person narration in the simple present tense, focussing on the events in 1943. (I am beginning to hate this writing choice of penning flashbacks in the present tense.)

❌ The pacing: Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

❌ No author’s note: I would have appreciated a clarification about which of the vents in the book are real, and which ones fabricated. (I am not sure if such a note is present in the final copy. My advanced copy didn’t have one.)

I am utterly disappointed because this had been a highly anticipated read for me. I have actualy been on a sabbatical from WWII fiction since more than two years now as I was so saturated with the repetitive stories being published. I was hoping that this book would get me back in the groove of my favourite genre. Instead, it has made me extend my sabbatical indefinitely.

Then again, if you aren’t the kind of reader who will be greatly bothered by writing choices and can focus on the characters instead of authorial choices, you will definitely enjoy this ride, as have a majority of readers. Unfortunately, I have come to realise that my enjoyment of a book is greatly dependent on its writing, and if the writing doesn’t work for me, I simply cannot get into a book, no matter how appealing the rest of it. So please take this review with a pinch of salt and give the book a go. (That said, if you do want to try this book, don’t opt for the audio version. I think it will be too chaotic to listen to.)

This is the first of an intended trilogy, but as this book is complete in itself (at least I felt so), I don’t know what is planned for the other two books. But based on this experience, I will desist from trying the remaining books. My journey with this author’s books begins and end with this read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through The Pigeonhole. This review is voluntary and contains an honest opinion about my reading experience. Sorry this didn’t work out better.