The Mercy Room: A Novel

By Gilles Rozier

Gilles Rozier's breathtaking third novel The Mercy Room is ample demonstration that a main character doesn't need to be lovable, but only closely observed and adroitly, somewhat ruthlessly portrayed.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316159735
• ISBN13: 9780316159739
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Hauntingly Tragic

This novel is so totally stark that it left this reader with, what I believe was, the author's intent, i.e., hollow. Set in Occupied France during WWII, the plot deals with familial disfunction, opportunism, betrayal, adoration, love, compulsions, indiffernce, and ultimately the demise of a man, and the death of another man's soul. This is the kind of book one does not want to put down, and when the reader turns the last page, he or she will have a microcosmic view of the horrow of World War II and human ignorance.

The Quality Of Mercy, Strained

Gilles Rozier (and his extraordinarily fine translator Anthea Bell) presents one of the more strangely involving stories of the French Occupation and Resistance during World War II. This brief (147 pages) novel is not only exquisitely written, it is terse, rich in mysteries and techniques, and raises more questions than it answers. Some may dismiss Rozier's novel as a gimmick: the narrator is never identified with a name or a gender and that identification is left completely up to the reader. Are we reading a story about an icy female German teacher who seduces/befriends a Jewish soldier into her protective cellar hideaway, or are we following a closeted gay man whose frustrations with life in the clime of the country during war encourage him to seduce/befriend a sensuous potential lover into the sanctity of his cellar with the hopes of eventually savoring the sexual relationship which has been denied him? The choice is the reader's option. For this reader the second alternative makes the story far more powerful on many levels and thus the male/male relationship is the road of interpretation elected. In a small French town during the Occupation lives a family: the father has been extricated by the Nazis, the mother tends to the home, the sister Anne lusts upstairs taking a SS officer Volker as her constant daily lover, the sister Isabelle remains out of the picture, and the other 'child' is our narrator. He (my choice) is a brilliant scholar whose chief loves in life are books, German literature and language (especially the works of Nazi forbidden Thomas Mann and Heinrich Heine). As a teacher in the local school his aptitudes are recognized and he is selected to translate sensitive documents for the Nazis. He has had one 'friend', one Hans Joachim, a handsome German who disappears when the Resistance and the Occupation clash. He agrees to marry one Jude, consenting to fulfill a family duty but completely denying any physical or emotional contact with her. His 'work' is delivered for translation by a stunningly handsome German officer Herman who hums Chopin while our narrator works, creating a strong sense of sexual tension and desire. When our narrator is moved to the halls of the Nazis to await pickup and delivery of the desired documents he watches the towns Jews march past him, surely on their way to railroad cars, camps, and extermination. When Herman appears in the line with these condemned Jews our narrator arranges to have him escape to the home of the narrator where he is sequestered in the cellar in a library full of books. Herman speaks and reads Yiddish, loves Heine as much as our narrator, and after our narrator's successfully engineered capture of Herman's private Heine book from his previous apartment, Herman at last shows the sensual, physical attraction to our narrator and they begin a blissful affair, with sexual encounters partially supplanting their mutual love for Heine. Herman teaches our narrator Yiddish in exch

Thunder

Perhaps the cover attracted me with a man and woman hugging like front & back covers of a book, connected by the binding giving us the title "The Mercy Room." The book tells us that this is Gilles Rozier's third book, yet it fails to list his previous two books. Perhaps they have yet to be translated. Anthea Bell's translation reads well in English. I found it fascinating that the original Yiddish or German poetry was often found in the text, causing me to flip to the back of the book and read the English translation in context. This is an unusual story. It is most unusual because of the emotional temperament of the narrator and main character. Rozier plays a little head game with the readers by leaving the gender of the narrator open-ended. We know the main character marries Jude; but Jude's gender is never tipped by use of male or female pronouns. I spent a few pages uncertain of the gender, but then quickly decided that the narrator is female and Jude was her husband. My thinking is that a guy might well kill himself for lack of sexual contact, whereas a woman might be more ambivalent. I also looked at the jacket photograph as being male on the left and female on the right; so I figured my interpretation was consistent with the publisher. However, our narrator is an ice queen. Her passions run to the German language and literature. There is not much else that turns her on. She is a dedicated Frenchwoman, being revolted by the Nazi SS Volker who has sex with her sister. The other family characters are almost all nondescript. The mother is mostly silent and self-contained. The sister Anne is mostly viewed by the narrator as she looks up at the shaking chandelier as Volker frolics. The other sister Isabelle and their kids are almost entirely removed from the story; we never encounter them as personalities, only as family presences. So what comes across is severe isolation. The little "Mercy Room" in the cellar where the narrator hides banned literature and reads secretly speaks of isolation. The narrator's connection to her job even speaks of her isolation from her students, not getting involved with them on a human level, just teaching so that she can buy more books and read. Her marriage to Jude is never consummated. She speaks almost with naivete since her detachment is so complete. In eight years of marriage, she doesn't see her husband without his clothes on, and prefers it that way. What is good about this novel is its stealth language. It sneaks up on you. We get lulled by the beautiful description and poetry and then walloped by some major piece of action that comes without buildup or analysis. The killing of Volker happens. Herman's rescue occurs quickly as does his demise. The only bit of personal life on which Rozier dwells is the lovemaking. This thunders. We feel the exquisite discovery. Yet, this is done in isolation as well, in the Mercy Room where sounds cannot let on about Herman's presence a

Intrigue and drama!

The unnamed teacher/narrator of German lives in a town in occupied France during World War II. The teacher (whose gender is unknown) cares only for literature, and marries, perhaps because it is expected. It is certainly not to partake in a sexual relationship as the marriage isn't consummated in eight years. The teacher is recruited by the Nazis to translate documents for them. Each time the teacher goes to the commandant's office to wait for the assignment, the teacher watches as prisoners are led to detention cells before deportation. The teacher recognized some of the prisoners as former neighbors. The teacher exists primarily through literature. Other than personal difficulties, the war doesn't seem to impact the teacher. Certainly it hasn't required involvement, heroic or otherwise. Then one day the teacher recognizes a Jewish soldier among the prisoners and sneaks the soldier (Herman) out of the headquarters. The teacher brings Herman home and hides him in the cellar of the teacher's family home where a torrid affair takes place under the "noses" of the family and an SS man who was having an affair with the teacher's sister. The Mercy Room is stunning, yet disturbing on many levels. The story is unique and interesting but is filled with such a feeling of hopelessness and sadness. The lovers are doomed from the beginning and the family is shattered by the war and by a family member's collaboration with the Nazis. And the fact that the reader doesn't know the gender of the narrator conjures up different scenarios that change, depending upon the sex assigned by the reader to the narrator at that moment. The Mercy Room is a relatively short but powerful novel and its length serves it well. A longer story might unravel, as it would be difficult to keep the narrator's gender a secret indefinitely. Armchair Interviews says: If you enjoy intrigue, drama and a well-written story, The Mercy Room would be an enjoyable read.

Realistic look at desperation and hardships

Reviewed by Joanne Benham for Reader Views (3/06) "The Mercy Room" is set in a small French town suffering under German occupation during World War II. The narrator's sister is the lover of one of the German SS officers, which gave their home and its occupants some protection against the atrocities carried out against their neighbors by the Nazis. The narrator, a schoolteacher who speaks and writes fluent German, is recruited by the Germans to translate the Nazi propaganda for distribution to the French people. The documents are brought to the schoolteacher's home by a young soldier who waits outside the study while the papers are translated. The schoolteacher lusts after the young man, but never pursues him. When the armistice was signed, the schoolteacher was no longer needed, so the young soldier never visited again. Two years later, the schoolteacher is again pressed into service as a translator. One day, while waiting in the Nazi headquarters for the documents, the young soldier turns up in the midst of a group of Jewish people on their way to be "processed" by the Nazis. The schoolteacher is able to spirit the ex-soldier out of the building and into the cellar of the family home, hidden behind some wine racks in a small, dirt floored room. This is the story of their love affair, carried out in the dark, damp room, in small intervals of time snatched whenever the schoolteacher could safely make the trip to the cellar. The book is a translation from French and has many literary excerpts in their native language with English translations at the end of the book. The author has chosen not to reveal the schoolteacher's gender and does so in ingenious ways. One moment you know it's a man, the next you know it's a woman. Even with this twist, I found this book stark and depressing, as would be expected from the subject matter. However, it is a grimly realistic look at the desperation and hardships suffered by many people during a grim era in history.