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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinary !,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: A Whispered Name (Paperback)
"A Whispered Name" is quite simply an extraordinary novel!!! I cherished my time reading this book. William Brodrick IS British and for the purposes of 'bookstore placement' this book might be classified as a mystery...but make no mistake about it...this is not an Agatha Christie or Ruth Rendell 'type' of British 'cozy' mystery. Rather, Mr. Brodrick uses the mystery genre more as a conduit for telling a larger and more important story.
To begin, I find Mr. Brodricks own personal story fascinating...he was once an Augustinian Monk who left the order to become a lawyer. His recurring charecter (in all three of his novels) is Father Anselm who was once a lawyer and left the law to become a Gilbertine Monk (no such order exists any longer)...as such, Mr. Brodrick is uniquely qualified to write on page 21 "...love without law would be licentious and law without love would be ruthless" and with that the stage is set for an amazing journey! Throughout the story the point is made, time and again, that to look at events and or situations out of context or seperate from their 'whole' is just that...an incomplete understanding. Things are not always 'black or white' or 'either or', they are indeed nuanced and when viewed in their completeness, the end result may provide a different meaning than assumptions based solely on their individual parts. A word of caution, perhaps...the story is filled with World War 1 references, military regiments, positions and names. As such...some readers may be discouraged or frustrated...but I urge those who may feel this way to stick with it...the rewards are rich upon completion as the reader will find in both chapter 58 and the Epilogue. I eagerly await Mr. Brodrick's next book !
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A story of sacrifice and redemption,
By
This review is from: A Whispered Name (Father Anselm Novels) (Paperback)
When a story covers the horror that was Passchendaele, it takes real skill to make one particular death significant. Brodrick does just that, and more. He gives this death meaning, and a sort of beauty, while gazing clear-eyed on the fear and horror of it.
"A Whispered Name" is the story of a young Irish soldier, and of the people whose lives were interwoven with his. The events of 1917 are threaded through a investigation in the late 20th century (I would have liked to have been given a clearer indication of just when the later narrative was taking place; as far as I could tell, it was the 1990s), with a handful of characters present in both time periods. A man is charged with desertion, and sentenced to death, because he was for a short time absent from his unit. But something is strange about this case: the narrative told by its paper trail has too many blanks. These absences of information begin to look deliberate. Through the eyes of Brother Anselm In the present day, and through a gradual unfolding of events in 1917, we discover what led to the decisions that determined Joseph Flanagan's fate in 1917, and the lasting effects of that fate on many others. I sometimes had difficulty keeping track of all the named soldiers, and I never quite understood Seosamh's motivation for enlisting. But those are small reservations. For the prose that's so often musical, especially when it's of and about the Irish characters, and for the stark evocation of place and time, this story will long stay with me.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great writer...,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: A Whispered Name (Hardcover)
Really great writer... can't believe I hadn't heard of him before running across William Brodrick while in Ireland. All three of his books are a must read.
Wish he had new books in the works.
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