The Statement

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful thriller
Review: The protagonist of this novel is the bad guy. And the question that Moore asks (and answers at the very end): is it possible for him to find salvation? What I like about this book is that it explores the boundaries between human wickedness and repentance in the personality of Brossard, the French Nazi sympathizer responsible for the deaths of some Jews during the Second World War. Although some Catholics help Brossard, their motivations for doing so are well-explained. This book is generally but subtly sympathetic to Catholicism overall. Please note that this book does contain some graphic scenes and profanity.

Rating:
Summary: ready for SUSPENSE ? here it is !
Review: The setting is southern France, 1989. Pierre Brossard is a man on the run for his life. For over 40 years he has been in hiding, counting on the complicity of the Catholic Church to perpetuate his anonymity. During WWII, Brossard was a member of the "milice" and as part of his duties at the time he personally shot 14 Jews in a clandestine pogrom and subsequently co-operated in the sending of many Jews from France to extermination camps. Through his many connections, Brossard managed at one point to obtain an official political pardon for his war-crimes, but now (in 1989) the charge of "crimes against humanity" has been added... with the result that even some of his strongest supporters have turned against him. There is a renewed interest in his case; he's running out of places to hide... and he has more pursuers than ever before.

Moore has written a great meditation on the historical processes and conditions that make war crimes or crimes against humanity so difficult to pursue. Brossard is demonstrative of the expertise with which such "criminals" are able to exploit various forces of compromise, immunity, asylum and refuge. Many questions are subtly raised by this book. The Church here affords a sort of refuge to the retributive justice that the outside world demands (concerning Brossard's obvious past crimes/sins)... but what of Brossard's inner torment? Even if the Church offers (grants) Divine pardon... does the pardon of man/society necessarily follow? Should it? (I hope not). What do we make of priestly absolution when it proves ineffective as conscience-cleanser? Is this question being answered when, with his final breath, Brossard tries to be penitent and sense God's pardon, and all he is afforded is a final look (in his mind's eye) at the people that he has killed?

It is a story told by a genius writer, Moore didn't even know how to disappoint a reader. The short quick chapters make you quickly forget whatever else you had to do today... you won't stop flipping the pages till your done. He changes the "I" of his narrator constantly, and never loses the reader for a moment. I've read almost all of his many books and consider this among his very best. This is a book that had significant meaning for the author (a sort of purging of his own shame at his father's conservative Catholoic belief and initial support of totalitarianism during WWII). Moore commented concerning "The Statement" that: "I never thought that novels changed the world. I still don't believe that. But I just thought that this was a story which really should come out." It should.

Rating:
Summary: ready for SUSPENSE ? here it is !
Review: The setting is southern France, 1989. Pierre Brossard is a man on the run for his life. For over 40 years he has been in hiding, counting on the complicity of the Catholic Church to perpetuate his anonymity. During WWII, Brossard was a member of the "milice" and as part of his duties at the time he personally shot 14 Jews in a clandestine pogrom and subsequently co-operated in the sending of many Jews from France to extermination camps. Through his many connections, Brossard managed at one point to obtain an official political pardon for his war-crimes, but now (in 1989) the charge of "crimes against humanity" has been added... with the result that even some of his strongest supporters have turned against him. There is a renewed interest in his case; he's running out of places to hide... and he has more pursuers than ever before.

Moore has written a great meditation on the historical processes and conditions that make war crimes or crimes against humanity so difficult to pursue. Brossard is demonstrative of the expertise with which such "criminals" are able to exploit various forces of compromise, immunity, asylum and refuge. Many questions are subtly raised by this book. The Church here affords a sort of refuge to the retributive justice that the outside world demands (concerning Brossard's obvious past crimes/sins)... but what of Brossard's inner torment? Even if the Church offers (grants) Divine pardon... does the pardon of man/society necessarily follow? Should it? (I hope not). What do we make of priestly absolution when it proves ineffective as conscience-cleanser? Is this question being answered when, with his final breath, Brossard tries to be penitent and sense God's pardon, and all he is afforded is a final look (in his mind's eye) at the people that he has killed?

It is a story told by a genius writer, Moore didn't even know how to disappoint a reader. The short quick chapters make you quickly forget whatever else you had to do today... you won't stop flipping the pages till your done. He changes the "I" of his narrator constantly, and never loses the reader for a moment. I've read almost all of his many books and consider this among his very best. This is a book that had significant meaning for the author (a sort of purging of his own shame at his father's conservative Catholoic belief and initial support of totalitarianism during WWII). Moore commented concerning "The Statement" that: "I never thought that novels changed the world. I still don't believe that. But I just thought that this was a story which really should come out." It should.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully crafted mediatation on justice, forgiveness, and
Review: This was my first Brian Moore novel; it will certainly not be my last! A story which begs to be read through in one sitting, The Statement holds the reader's breathless attention until the final paragraph. An extremely thoughtful exploration of the realities of life in Vichy France- a hidden history for many of us, into which this was a fascinating glimpse. The character of the protagonist is finely drawn and multi-dimensional. The 'supporting cast' provide a variety of perspectives which enhance this portrait and bring M. Brossard to vivid life. Above all, this novel is a fascinating meditation on the ultimate meaning of terms like 'justice,' and 'forgiveness, and their application in a very real- and sorrowfully sinful- world.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully crafted mediatation on justice, forgiveness, and
Review: This was my first Brian Moore novel; it will certainly not be my last! A story which begs to be read through in one sitting, The Statement holds the reader's breathless attention until the final paragraph. An extremely thoughtful exploration of the realities of life in Vichy France- a hidden history for many of us, into which this was a fascinating glimpse. The character of the protagonist is finely drawn and multi-dimensional. The 'supporting cast' provide a variety of perspectives which enhance this portrait and bring M. Brossard to vivid life. Above all, this novel is a fascinating meditation on the ultimate meaning of terms like 'justice,' and 'forgiveness, and their application in a very real- and sorrowfully sinful- world.

Rating:
Summary: The comparisons to Greene are almost warranted
Review: While they were both still walking the earth, Graham Greene said of Brian Moore, "He is my favorite living novelist." And while Greene's place among the canon for twentieth-century British literature is as solid as they come, I fear that (the late?) Brian Moore may toddle off into obscurity as we wander through the next century. As a writer of what I can only call "literary mysteries," Moore and his mentor, Greene, stand with a handful of others, almost all British-- Geoffrey Household and Stephen Gregory are, in fact, the only two I can think of off the top of my head, and they, too, are destined for obscurity.

In this, his eighteenth (and last?) novel, Moore gives us Pierre Brossard, a Vichy sergeant who was pardoned of his war crimes in 1971, but has since been re-charged with the international Crime Against Humanity for the murder of fourteen Jews at Dombey during WW2. Brossard has been hiding with the Roman Catholic church for forty-four years, moving from abbey to abbey, concealed both by the Vichy-sympathizing elements in Mother Church and higher-ups in the French government. But with these new charges come new dispensations from a new Juge D'instruction and a far more liberal Pope, and he finds the doors of many of his old hideaways closed to him again, just as a new terrorist group is sending assassins after him for the murder of the Dombey Jews.

The synopsis of the book on its jacket doesn't really give much in the way of hope for this being all too gripping a novel; to continue the comparisons to Greene, this is more an End of the Affair than it is a Third Man. But that doesn't mean it's still not a cracking good detective story. Interestingly, all the major players are given to you within the first few chapters; it's up to you to figure out who they are and how they tie in (it is eerily reminiscent of Heinrich Boll's novels in this regard). Beneath the detective story lies the story of France itself, still struggling to find a national identity more than forty years after the end of World War II.

Despite all the heavy-sounding material, it really is a rather quick read, and it moves along fast enough that you can keep the pages turning with minimal effort.