The horrors of war laid bare on soldiers' quest to find themselves
Peace Richard Bausch (Tuskar Rock, stg£12.99)
Peace is the first novel from Tuskar Rock, a new Atlantic Books imprint launched by the author Colm Tóibín and the publisher and editor turned literary agent Peter Straus. Tóibín needs no introduction. Straus is one of the legendary figures of the British literary world and over the years has worked with such authors as Don De Lillo, Cormac McCarthy, VS Naipaul, Michael Ondaatje and Kate Atkinson among many others, including Tóibín himself.
Peace is set in Italy during the brutal winter of 1944, as a disintegrating troupe of American soldiers struggles to ascend a mountain near Monte Cassino. Their fate rests in the hands of their guide, an aging local man whose motivation lies shrouded in doubt. As the Americans face the impossible physical grind of moving forward, they find themselves questioning whether he is helping them or leading them to their death.
Their battle is much more than simply a physical one, their enemies not just the Germans. This group must also come to terms with the cold-blooded murder of an innocent by one of their own. They are lost up the mountain, in every sense. And the real question is will they ever be able to find themselves again.
Bausch's spare prose places you shivering in their jackboots, deliberating over the moral quandaries. He paints an empathetic portrait of a soldier, who is not yet fully emotionally numb, as he grapples to understand this living purgatory. Bausch skillfully deploys the "less is more" model most effectively when the horrific extermination of a small village community is conveyed through the faraway sound of rifle fire and the growing realisation of the tragedy on the listeners.
The bleak horrors of war have rarely felt more real.
Irish Independent
