Peace [Hardcover]

Richard Bausch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2008

From the prize-winning novelist and world-renowned short story writer, recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award and the Academy Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, a powerful novel about war, trust, and salvation that begs to be read in a single sitting.

Italy, near Cassino. The terrible winter of 1944. A dismal icy rain, continuing unabated for days. Guided by a seventy-year-old Italian man in rope-soled shoes, three American soldiers are sent on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a steep hill that they discover, before very long, to be a mountain. And the old man’s indeterminate loyalties only add to the terror and confusion that engulf them on that mountain, where they are confronted with the horror of their own time—and then set upon by a sniper.

Taut and propulsive—with its spare language, its punishing landscape, and the keenly drawn portraits of the three young soldiers at its center—Peace is a feat of economy, compression, and imagination, a brutal and unmistakably contemporary meditation on the corrosiveness of violence, the human cost of war, and the redemptive power of mercy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. An abrupt and chilling act of violence opens Bauch's 11th novel, marking the beginning of a bleak but compelling meditation on the moral dimensions of warfare. Cpl. Robert Marson is trudging up an Italian hillside, leading two of his men on an uncertain mission through the unrelenting winter of 1944. The soldiers are haunted by the cold-blooded murder by their sergeant, Glick, of a woman on the Italian roadside, and highly suspicious of the Italian farmer they have enlisted to act as a guide in their scouting mission. Snipers loom along their path, and the immediate fear of death seeps into each tantalizing memory of home. Equivocation between the absurdity of an unreported murder and the inevitability of killing as a means of survival drives the troops' despairing, profanity-laced banter as the meaninglessness of their mission becomes clear. The peace of the title is glimpsed only fleetingly, throwing into relief the stark, indiscriminate nature of war. Bausch's compassion for Marson and his men is evident, but his story is unforgiving; the tightly paced final scenes offer no clarity of purpose in a dark war story of unyielding sorrow. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* How to fictionalize war? A novelist can take a panoramic perspective and write about generals and battles or focus on a single participant’s fear and courage. Bausch, a consummate and versatile short story writer and novelist, tells one soldier’s story in a war novel distilled to its chilling essence. The earth itself is an adversary as Corporal Robert Marson takes two men on a miserable recon mission in Italy at the bitter end of Word War II. The nervous Americans draft an old man they’re not sure they can trust as their guide. The rain is piercing, the hill they climb turns out to be a mountain, and it begins to snow. Someone is hunting them, shots ring out from the village below in ominously measured bursts, and it feels like the end of the world. Their awful travail is made worse by bigot Joyner’s needling of Asch, a Jew. Marson thinks of his sunny past and the baby daughter he’s never seen and tries to hold on to a sense of right and wrong. Bausch’s tale of one act in the immense blood-dark theater of military conflict is razor-sharp, sorrowfully poetic, and steeped in the wretched absurdity of war, the dream of peace. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (April 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307268330
• ISBN-13: 978-0307268334
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,048,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars no words are wasted, April 28, 2008

By 

Richard Cumming "dick" (the heartland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peace (Hardcover)

PEACE, the title of Bausch's new novel will throw many readers. This is a war story where the tension builds inexorably and there are rarely any moments that feel peaceful. Readers have to earn this peace.

Most of the story takes place on a cold winter night in 1944 in Italy as the German army retreats with the US Army hot on their tails. Three Americans are sent up a hill to see if they can spot the Germans and report back on their movements. The main character, Corporal Marson has Joyner and Asch serving under him. They have a guide, an elderly Italian man who they found driving a cart in the area,

As they climb the hill the weather turns from bad to worse as night falls and they determine that this hill is actually much bigger than they knew. It is a mountain and as they bivouac on the side of it in a blizzard they begin to fear the worst.

This pithy novel is written with utter economy. We feel the fear and the pain of our 3 soldiers as they stalk their invisible enemies. I won't give any more away except that when you reach the conclusion you will find peace, but only for a moment.

Simply magnificent writing here.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Man's (In)Humanity to Man, June 13, 2008

By 

David Donelson "Author of The Dynamic Manager... - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Peace (Hardcover)

Richard Bausch's taut novel tells us what happens when civilian soldiers go to war. It's a powerfully atmospheric story about three American soldiers sent up a mountain in Italy near Cassino during the brutal winter of 1944. Their mission: see what the Germans are doing on the other side. Their mental state: conflicted by the shooting of a German woman they witnessed just before they left. Was it murder? An act of war? Should they report it when they return or simply fold it into their psyches? They struggle with the moral dilemma while they slog their way up the cold, miserable mountain.

Bausch's ability to bring the reader fully into his story is well-demonstrated in this book. The tension builds page by page until the wholly satisfying climax, the niggling arguments among the men are just repetitive and just disconcerting enough to make the reader angry, and the perfectly-mounted descriptions of the cold, hard rain, the wet, view-obliterating snow make you wish (just like the soldiers) that you were somewhere else.

Ambiguity is a beautiful thing in Bausch's hands. The squad's guide, Angelo, could be a simple peasant or a German spy--or something else entirely. The protagonist, Corporal Marson, could be a baseball-playing All-American hero or a morally-bereft corporal looking for the easy way out. How these and the other sources of tension in the book are resolved propels the reader through to the end.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not an Anti-War Novel- Short, but a Gem, May 23, 2008

By 

Belatn "B" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peace (Hardcover)

Beg to differ with previous reviewer, but this is not an anti-anything work. It's a story of conscience and the dignity of man in inhuman circumstances. Highly recommended.