The Mercy Room

Gilles Rozier
publisheranddate
ISBN 0316159735
Reviewed by Little, Brown & Company (2006) 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.

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