NOVEL OF THE WEEK


Love is seldom pure, never simple


The Absolutist John Boyne


DOUBLEDAY, 320PP, £16.99 ■Tablet bookshop price £15.30 Tel 01420 592974


B


ritain’s great novelist of the early twentieth century, E.M. Forster, famously said: “If I had the guts to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I would have the guts to betray my country.” E.M. Forster was also famously gay. The ambiguous nature of the relationship between a man and his “friends” lies at the heart of John Boyne’s novel about conscientious objectors during the First World War. “Feather men” were reviled at all stages of the First World War, although they often proved quite as brave as the soldiers alongside whom they worked. “Conchies” rescued and directed the wounded, bore stretchers and drove ambulances. “Absolutists” were more extreme: they refused to help in the conduct of killing others in any way. Boyne’s clever title, The


John Boyne


Absolutist, refers to both his


protagonists: one who refuses to fight after he


witnesses a murder; the other who seeks


absolution. Tristan and Will team up during their


training period at Aldershot, drawn together in mutual loathing of a brutal sergeant. One of their fellow trainees is a “feather man” waiting to be registered as a non-combatant. He is expecting to go to France with the rest of the troops, but he is found mysteriously drowned the day after his status as a conscientious objector is approved. Will is fascinated by the feather man’s pacifist principles but clings, romantically, to notions of bravery in combat and proving himself. Tristan, the novel’s narrator, has no time for principles or ideals. It is Will himself who fascinates Tristan. The circumstances leading to Will’s death – he is shot as a traitor – are gradually revealed. Viewed from the


perspective of old age, the story is told in two time frames. Alternate chapters describe periods of intense activity in the trenches – blood, sex, madness, deceit – and a series of combative conversations with Will’s sister in genteel post-war Norwich. Boyne’s distinctive, flat style makes both


settings equally painful. Tristan is tortured by guilt: not only by the guilt of the survivor, and of the young man who has known since he was 15 that “there was something wrong” with him, but by the guilt of betrayal. Tristan’s certainty that love and sex are the same thing leads, ultimately, to the death of his friend. In this very grown-up work, Boyne


returns to themes that pervade the novel that remains his greatest achievement, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a tender story of difference and friendship. Two nine-year-old boys become best friends: one is an inmate of Auschwitz, the other, the son of the commandant. The tragedy that unfolds is inevitable, but wreathed in love and loyalty. Here the tragedy is clouded by misunderstanding and guilt. The beauty of Striped Pyjamas is its clarity: everything that happens is seen through the eyes of the nine-year-old, privileged but innocent. The strength of the current novel is its understanding of the messiness of real life, once we look at it as adults. Sarah Hayes


Another Spiritual Masterpiece from David Torkington Reviews


‘This book has an infectious energy that impels the reader to keep turning the pages. In well over fi fty years I have never read a better book on the sublime spirituality of St Francis’.


Andrew McMahon OFM MA MBE


‘The succinct synopsis of the teaching of Scotus and the way he views theology in the light of the Primacy of Love is beautifully done’. Fr Thomas More OFM cap Oxford emeritus Provincial of the Capuchin Order


‘This is not a partisan book about the past but about the present and the profound spirituality that should have fl own eff ortlessly from Vatican II. When Teilhard de Chardin discovered the teaching of Blessed John Duns Scotus he said “Voila! La theologie de l’avenir”. That future is now’. Sister Bernardino TOSF B.Sc


‘The author is to be congratulated. I fi nd the style simple and easy to read. It fl ows. It presents very well the essence of Franciscan prayer and spirituality’. Fr Quentin Jackson OFM PhD emeritus professor and Provincial of the English province


David Torkington has sold over 200,000 books. Visit his website www.davidtorkington.com


This book is published by O-Books and may be bought from any bookshop, quoting ISBN 978-1-84694-442-0 or from Amazon.


2 July 2011 | THE TABLET | 23


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