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

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This is a love letter to Rome, Italy, and Ireland, by turns heart-rending, comedic and awe-inspiring. O’Connor has a glorious way with words: he writes of Cahersiveen in County Kerry as a place “where a bottle of tomato ketchup would be considered exotic and possession of a clove of garlic would have you burned as a witch”. Here he’s ambling up the steps to the residence and he grey with the dust from boots to helmet, huge leather gloves on him like a flying ace, and he blessing himself at the Lourdes water font on the hall stand. 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.) In Partnership with St Martin-in-the-Fields. This series of nine lectures is inspired by the words of Martin Luther during the Reformation. Distinguished speakers investigate those things in which we believe deeply – and for which we would be prepared to make a costly stand.

You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. There is a guest appearance by an outraged Pope, furious at O’Flaherty’s “insubordination” when it comes to visiting prisoners of war in Rome, fascinating in the light of what was later learned about the behaviour of the wartime pontiff in relation to the Nazi regime. O’Flaherty himself is a complex and believable hero. Part of O’Connor’s genius is that we hear O’Flaherty’s own voice and see him through the narration of his friends. He is a papal diplomat brought up in rural Ireland in the bloody years of Irish Independence. We learn to know him through the warm tales of his life as a priest fresh to Rome, and his delight and ease in the city. He came to be friends with the people who are risking their lives alongside him. The mix of first- and third-person narratives feels fresh, insightful, and true. O’Flaherty and his accomplices are driven by a strong sense of moral justice, sensitively rendered by O’Connor. “There’s a swamp between you and the right thing,” as an English comrade of O’Flaherty’s puts it. “How far out are you going to wade?” The boorishness of the occupying Nazis — they “slobber, brangle, murder folk songs” — contrasts starkly with the beauty of Rome itself. The countess waxes lyrical about “that particular redolence of old, heated dust”; for O’Flaherty, the city’s inhabitants are “like people stepped out of a Caravaggio, long-nosed, alluring, courtly. The street singers, the vagabonds, the bawling men arguing...” Will anyone care? I doubt it. Readers will be too caught up in the stylishness of O’Connor’s writing, the delight in watching a plan come together, the tension of wondering whether it will succeed. I was reminded of the novels of John Boyne, Kate Atkinson, and most unusually, Andrew O’Hagan’s wonderful novel on fame, Personality, which has a similarly dazzling way with voice and historical period detail.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. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. O’Connor has a real gift for memorable scenes that live long in the memory and feel almost like a short story — the “choir” practising in a disused room and seizing a moment of harmony and happiness while creating their cover story; O’Flaherty hiding his notes away while under intense threat; the confrontation in the confessional; a network member realising that he does not have the courage that he needs to do the job that he volunteered for, and being met with understanding and sympathy by the rest of the network.

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.The novel, set in Rome in 1943, is based on the extraordinary true story of a Catholic priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, and the running battle of wits he and a team of unlikely conspirators played against Rome’s terrifying Gestapo leader, Paul Hauptmann.

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. 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.) 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. 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. As though a priest dressed like that was the most everyday sight you ever saw. And the bang of motor oil off him.” Ah, yes, as my old art editor used to say, he can throw a word to a pig.

OTHER STORIES

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. But all the while, he is distributing detailed instructions to each for what to do on the next Rendimento, the mission to help save thousands of Allied men. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.