Review: The Betrayed
The Betrayed. Christy Kenneally. WW2-based novel.
That's not to say it is a bad book. On the contrary—superbly written, well plotted, and with absolutely believable characters, it is only what I would expect from an expert communicator with whom I worked more than three decades ago.
It is the first time I have read one of Christy Kenneally's novels. I will read the others, and not just because we soldiered together for a time in the Catholic Communications Centre.
This one is set during WW2, in Austria, Rome and on the unforgiving Russian terrain to Moscow, where 'General Winter' was the master in defeating Hitler's war on the eastern front.
It is about that war, about how the Vatican under Pius XII allowed Jews to die rather than upset Hitler into adding Catholics onto his list of unsuitables. About atrocities in Yugoslavia that sound an all too familiar resonance with more recent activities in that part of the world.
But it is particularly about two teenagers in a village in Austria, and the girl who bound them together even in moral and geographical separation, until they had to face each other over the tragedy of that relationship. They are the keel upon which the ship of this story is supported as it sails.
Kenneally uses historical characters with a deft touch of dialogue which brings them to life outside the dust of the times from which they have long since departed. His own past in religion clearly helped him in understanding, and relating, the politics of the Catholic Church over the time of his narrative. And we can't help but wonder if much has changed?
His teenagers who become men overnight, through circumstances both of their own making and of the world beyond their village life, are strong in their different ways. Though those strengths are destined for trial—for each separately—in a range of terrible incidents.
It is a story of people, against an epic backdrop of a particular time. It is the kind of book where the background could easily have been allowed to overwhelm the human elements. That they didn't is testament to the author's understanding of humanity and personality. An attribute which he has shared for decades across Ireland, most recently in Kilcullen when he gave a talk on bereavement.
The Betrayed is a tough book to keep reading, and not one for escapist entertainment. But perhaps we should all read books, from time to time, which try to put into human terms the lessons from the past. Not that we will necessarily learn from them, because human nature doesn't do that well, God knows.
But at least, when as a species we commit the same sins again, we don't have the excuse that we didn't know. No more than Pius XII had that excuse.
As I said, I didn't enjoy reading this one. But I did have to finish it.
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