Tag: Richard Bausch

6 Degrees of Separation

Six Degrees of Separation: From ‘Beach Read’ to ‘The Second Son’

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Six degrees of separation logo for memeHappy New Year all, and welcome to my first post of 2023.

I have had a refreshing “digital detox” over the festive season (my favourite books of 2022 post was scheduled in advance) and stayed off the Internet for almost two weeks. I took an (excruciatingly expensive) air flight to Melbourne to catch up with family I hadn’t seen in three years (because of covid border restrictions) and had a lovely time doing as little as possible for about 9 days. But now it’s time to get back into the swing of things.

What better way to kick-start my blogging mojo than by participating in Six Degrees of Separation, a meme that runs the first Saturday of every month and is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavouriteandbest. It works like this: Kate suggests a starter book and the idea is to then create a chain of six more books, linking each one as you see fit.

Here are the six books I have chosen for my chain. Click the title to read my full review of each book.

This month the starting book is…

‘Beach Read’ by Emily Henry (2022)

I haven’t read this book, which I believe is a romantic comedy starring two writers who are polar opposites. The description on Amazon sounds rather fun, although the reviews are mixed. I’m linking this one to…

‘A Ladder to the Sky’ by John Boyne (2019)

In this hugely fun novel with a dastardly twist, a narcissistic writer does everything he can to become rich and famous despite having little to no creative ability. He uses people, steals their intellectual copyright, purloins their personal stories and passes off others’ work as his own — regardless of the consequences!

‘Vladimir’ by Julia May Jonas (2022)

Another rip-roaring tale about someone behaving badly and ignoring the consequences is Vladimir, a campus novel starring a popular English professor who pursues a man much younger than herself while her husband stands accused of inappropriate relationships with former students decades earlier.

‘A Separate Peace’ by John Knowles (1959)

I’m not really into campus novels, but this American classic, largely set in a boarding school, is a compelling story about a fraught friendship between two completely different teenage boys growing up in the shadow of the Second World War.

‘Peace’ by Richard Bausch (2009)

I’m linking to this because it has the word “peace” in the title, but it also shares the Second World War setting. In this gripping novella, a group of American soldiers on foot patrol are trying to locate the enemy in difficult terrain and weather conditions when their sergeant commits a war crime — he deliberately shoots an unarmed woman — which poses complex issues for all who witness it.

‘Girl at War’ by Sara Nović (2015)

War crimes feature in this deeply affecting story about a 10-year-old Croatian girl who becomes a child soldier in the Yugoslavian civil war of the early 1990s. When she is smuggled out of the country to begin a new life in the USA, her past continues to haunt her well into adulthood.

‘The Second Son’ by Loraine Peck (2021)

 In this gangland crime novel set in Sydney’s western suburbs,.a Croatian immigrant heads up an organised crime family which runs a string of fish’n chip shops as a front for nefarious activities including money laundering and drug trafficking.  

So that’s this month’s #6Degrees: from a romantic comedy to a gangland crime novel, via stories about narcissistic people, the Second World War and the Yugoslavian civil war.

Have you read any of these books? 

Please note that you can see all my other Six Degrees of Separation contributions here.

Author, Book review, Fiction, Italy, literary fiction, Publisher, Richard Bausch, Setting, Tuskar Rock Press, war

‘Peace’ by Richard Bausch

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Peace

Fiction – hardcover; Tuskar Rock; 171 pages; 2009.

There’s a lot to be said for short, succinct books, especially if they deliver punches that feel more powerful — and more targeted — than might be achieved by novels of much longer length. It takes a particular skill to craft stories that have been honed to the bare minimum without losing the essence of what makes them special.

Richard Bausch, an American writer, has that rare talent to convey meaning and emotion in a tightly written narrative in which every word has to justify its existence. No surprise, then, that he’s largely known as a short story writer.

Peace, first published in 2009 — in the then new Atlantic imprint Tuskar Rock started by Colm Toibin — proves that in the right hands a story doesn’t have to be 500 pages long to have an impact. I came away from this one reeling not only with the drama of it, but also the beauty of Bausch’s lyrical, stripped-back prose hugely reminiscent at times of all those Irish writers I’ve come to know and love. On more than one occasion I was reminded of John McGahern — which is high praise indeed.

Dying days of war

The story is set in Italy at the tail end of the Second World War. A group of American soldiers on foot patrol are trying to locate the enemy, which is on the retreat.

The weather is atrocious, the soldiers are exhausted (some are ill with dysentery) and morale is low. When their sergeant commits a war crime — he deliberately shoots an unarmed woman because “she would have shot us all if she could” — those who witness it are too foot-sore and weary to report it. But this one act hangs over all who saw it, haunting their days and their nights.

Three of those witnesses — Marson, Asch and Joyner — are sent on a reconnaissance mission, up a steep mountain with an old Italian man as a guide. What ensues is a difficult journey that is fraught with danger, not only from treacherous terrain and freezing rain and snow, but German snipers hidden in the woods.

Stress and fear

Under these stressful and challenging conditions the soldiers’ fears are heightened and yet they cannot forget what they saw the day before, discussing it over and over amongst themselves — was the act justified? should they forget it or report it? are they complicit in the crime? — which only serves to deepen the ructions and tensions between them.

This is a useful device for Bausch to examine each man’s character, to fill in their back stories and to explore their own individual morals and beliefs. What emerges is a carefully drawn portrait of a trio of soldiers, fighting on the same side, but all with different prejudices, opinions, fears and foibles.

“You guys are Christians,” Asch said. “You believe in an angry God who’s interested in payback. Right? ‘Vengeance is mine’ — all that. Well, we’re gonna pay for yesterday. I think we might be paying for it now.”
“You’re so full of shit,” Joyner said. “Let go of it, will you? It’s our religion so we’re the ones who’ll go to hell, not you.”
“I’m not even going to answer that,” Asch said. “Jesus, Joyner. The way your mind works.”
“It’s stupid to argue about it here,” Marson said.

Creeping sense of unease

As the narrative progresses, the reader begins to share the soldiers’ growing sense of unease and paranoia: will they be ambushed by the enemy? Is the Italian man as innocent as he purports to be? Is their mission a complete waste of time?

Peace explores all kinds of issues assorted with war, not least the fine line between courage and fear, and the temptation to behave in ways that would be out of keeping under normal, peace-time circumstances. It highlights the immense task that young, largely immature, men had to endure: Asch and Joyner are barely out of their teens, and Marson, who is their corporal, is only in his mid-20s and yet here they are confronting death — the likelihood of theirs, the prospect of killing others — on a daily basis. Bausch never makes them heroic, but instead shows their innermost struggles to make sense of a world gone mad. There is fear, foreboding and anger on almost every page, but there is also tenderness and heartbreak as each man determines what it is to be good in the face of so much horror.

Despite being less than 180 pages, this is an emotionally intelligent book dealing with weighty themes. It brims with tension and moral complexity but is dotted with lovely moments of quiet reflection that make it an astonishing, curiously gripping and heartfelt read.