A WWII concentration camp survivor fetches up in Jerusalem and falls in with one of the Jewish factions fighting against British occupation on behalf of Israeli independence.

O'Nan isn't capable of writing a bad book, but this one certainly doesn't come up to his usual level. The characters keep each other -- and the reader -- at arm's length throughout, and the spare style of the novel reflects that emotional detachment.

No matter how strongly one might feel about the righteousness of the Jewish cause, the whole underground-patriot thing just doesn't have the luster it once had. Descriptions of the aftermath of the bombing of a major building are uncomfortable to read in the post-nine-eleven world, and it was surprising to realize this book was written in 2016. ( )

Quite a bit of meandering, and it seems like in an attempt to make the secretive, underground aspect more pronounced, some level of foreboding and suspense was sacrificed. ( )

Book on CD narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

From the book jacket: In 1945, Jewish refugees by the thousands set out for Palestine. Those who made it relied on the underground to shelter them; taking false names, they blended with the population, joining the wildly different factions fighting for independence. [This book] follows one survivor, Brand, as he tries to regain himself after losing everyone he’s ever loved. Now driving a taxi provided – like his new identity – by the underground, he navigates the twisting streets of Jerusalem as well as the overlapping, sometimes deadly loyalties of the resistance.

My reactions:
I really like O’Nan’s writing. I like the way he gets inside the character’s psychological makeup, how he reveals his characters strengths and flaws, hopes and fears through the action of the story. This book is a very contemplative one. Brand – or Jossi Jorgenen as he is known in Jerusalem – is forced to think through the various possibilities each time he’s given a task. Is this simply a taxi fare? Or is there a coded message in the destination or time of pick up? Can he trust his landlady? What about Eva, the woman he loves and who professes to love him? Are the leaders of the resistance confident in his loyalty to them? Or will he be taken into the desert and shot, his body left for the carrion eaters to dispose of?

This is a slim volume but full of information about the time and location. I found myself searching google for more details and for pictures of the city to better understand what was happening and where the action was taking place.

All that being said, it was perhaps too intense for me, at least at this time. Yes, there is plenty of action, but I was left feeling tense and ill at ease. I’ve got enough of that in real life these days.

Edoardo Ballerini is a marvelous voice artist and narrator. I think I would listen to him read anything, even a receipt for dry cleaning. ( )

A beautiful, nuanced, engrossing read. The story is set in a post-World War II Jerusalem still occupied by the Brits, among Jewish guerrillas allied in a cell that carry out bombings meant to shake loose the occupiers and create an independent Israel.

But as reviewers have noted the writing is spare, quiet, with a pervasive melancholy. It seems everyone, including the Latvian refugee Brand, is deeply damaged, just trying to reconstruct a simple life with simple pleasures. But the ghosts of the past haunt everyone and the violence is quick and severe, lurid in its intensity. In our current hyper confessional culture, the reserve of those who have seen and suffered atrocities is searing.

I marked many passages. Here is O'Nan writing about what it means to be a survivor. "He wasn't weak enough to kill himself, but wasn't strong enough to stop wanting to. There was always the question of what to do with his old life, memory seething in him like a disease. Not only his sorrow, but the guard stomping on Koppelman's face, the dog shaking the child, the wheels of the train slicing the idiot Gypsy boy in two -- atrocities so commonplace that no one wanted to hear them. Everything he'd witnessed was his now, indelible yet unspeakable. His best chance was to forget, and so he kept on, letting the meaningless present distract him."

WOW.

O'Nan doesn't give more detail about any of these events, making them all the stronger for being shards of memory. Later, he revisits one memory in more depth, the site of the massacre where Brand's wife was likely murdered. After Brand's release from the camp, "he'd taken to the train out through the leafy countryside to Crow Forest the same way they'd been marched in the snow, but the ground had been dug up by the Russians, the bodies carted away in dump trucks and tipped into secret graves with the German dead, a second desecration. He walked the turned earth, searching for a scrap of cloth, a button, the steel frames from a pair of eyeglasses, any clue as to what had happened there. It was May and the first shoots of grass had sprung up, fringing the mounds with green. All around, weeds and thistles grew knee-high, thriving reminders of the relentless business of life. He stood in the clearing, looking at the trees on all sides reaching for the sun, the birds flitting from branch to branch, calling to one another, and knew he had to leave."

On a smaller level, I noticed how the place names gave so much texture -- Queen Melisande's Way, Kilimanjaro Supper Club, Zion Gate, Street of the Martyrs.

stirring look at a critical point in history from the ground ( )