Peace

Michael Kramer's voice is heavy with the wariness, fatigue, and cynicism of men who have seen more than they ever expected or wanted. In 1944, three American soldiers trudge through an icy rain up an Italian mountainside on an uncertain mission, led by an elderly native they dare not trust into danger they cannot predict. Kramer's reading is taut and unsentimental, alive to the tensions of Bausch's spare narrative and to the push-pull interplay among infantrymen who don't necessarily care for each other but who are bound by their shared goal--to survive the war. In Kramer's masterful performance, the dialogue among the three crackles with the slights, affection, and humor that pass among them. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 25, 2008
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.