THE GHOSTS OF ROME is the second in an assured and inspired trilogy by Joseph O’Connor. My Father’s House (Book Club, 1 June 2023) focused on Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who was the central figure of The Choir, a Vatican-based group who hid and supported escaped Allied POWs across Rome during the Nazi occupation. It was a compelling read, built on O’Flaherty’s true story.
At the end of the previous book, O’Flaherty was exhausted from the pressure of being responsible for thousands of “Books” (as they call those in hiding) and the safety of his friends under the intense scrutiny of the Gestapo, personified in Commandant Paul Hauptmann.
The focus in this book is on a Roman aristocrat, Giovanna Landini, and the increasingly central part that she plays as the most courageous member of The Choir, and on Hauptmann’s increasing obsession with her, and with her home, which he occupies.
Everything is darker and more claustrophobic. As the Allies advance up Italy, food and medicine become harder to get. Bombing attacks from the air cause terror and destruction — and, on the ground, the Fascists are becoming more and more violent, acting without restraint. O’Connor writes movingly of daily life in a city that is in agony, of quiet endurance, of compromise and collusion, and of the stunning defiance of nameless individuals who step on to the page and then fade back into the darkness of occupied Rome.
O’Connor brilliantly describes the air of threat, depression, and fear which The Choir constantly live with. Everything feels dirty, empty, threatening, and, in that context, courage is even more precious, and selflessness burns even more brightly. We are introduced to an over-confident soldier from Staten Island, a principled German secretary, a wounded Polish pilot, and a courageous young medical student, who all raise the stakes for the reader because we care deeply for them.
Humane, terrifying, raw, and beautiful, The Ghosts of Rome haunts and inspires the reader. That it feels even more immersive and gripping than My Father’s House is the highest of praise. The bar is set very high indeed for the final book in O’Connor’s Escape Line Trilogy. I can’t wait.
The Revd Richard Lamey is Director of Mission and Ministry in the diocese of Norwich.
The Ghosts of Rome
Joseph O’Connor
Harvill Secker £20
(978-1-78730-387-4)
Church Times Bookshop £18
