Peace

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.

March 15, 2008
Bausch is best known for his short stories, but this powerful novella demonstrates his skill at spare language and tight construction. In the winter of 1944, a group of seven young American GIs slogs through the freezing rain near Cassino in southern Italy. The Italian government has fallen and the Germans are retreating northward. The Americans have just summarily executed a Nazi officer and his female companion, and they argue about whether it was the right thing to do. Marson, the group's leader, remembers promising his father that he would do his duty, but the words have lost their meaning in the fog of war. Scared and lost, they enlist the help of an elderly Italian, who leads them up a steep mountainside. Almost immediately they encounter enemy fire. Has the Italian betrayed them, and, if he has, what should they do about it? Like Matthew Eck's recent "The Farther Shore", Bausch's book demonstrates that regardless of the geographical setting or historical period, all war stories are now fundamentally about Iraq. Recommended for most fiction collections.Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2008
How to fictionalize war? A novelist can take a panoramic perspective and write about generals and battles orfocus on a single participants fear and courage. Bausch, a consummate and versatile short story writer and novelist, tells one soldiers story in a war novel distilled to its chilling essence. The earth itself is an adversary as Corporal Robert Marson takes two men on a miserable recon mission in Italy at the bitter end of Word War II. The nervous Americans draft an old man theyre not sure they can trust as their guide. The rain is piercing, the hill they climb turns out to be a mountain, and it begins to snow. Someone is hunting them, shots ring out from the village below in ominously measured bursts, and it feels like the end of the world. Their awful travail is made worse by bigot Joyners needling of Asch, a Jew. Marson thinks of his sunny past and the baby daughter hes never seen and tries to hold on to a sense of right and wrong. Bauschs tale of one act in the immense blood-dark theater of military conflict is razor-sharp, sorrowfully poetic, and steeped in the wretched absurdity of war, the dream of peace.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)