Book Review: The Gendarme

Book: The Gendarme by Mark Mustian
Finished: January 2011
Pages:288
Challenges: **A-Z ** Amy Einhorn Perpetual Challenge **

What Amazon says:

"What would you do if the love of your life, and all your memories, were lost- only to reappear, but with such shocking revelations that you wish you had never remembered...

Emmett Conn is an old man, near the end of his life. A World War I veteran, he's been affected by memory loss since being injured during the war. To those around him, he's simply a confused man, fading in and out of senility. But what they don't know is that Emmett has been beset by memories, of events he and others have denied or purposely forgotten."

What I say:

This book, part of the Amy Einhorn imprint which is a part of Penguin Group, is truly haunting and beautifully written.

Told alternately between present day and a time 70 years earlier is very effective in showing us how the people in Emmett's life would for sure think he is jus a confused old man. The horror of the Armenian death march is doled out a little at a time, which for me made it more tolerable. After years of reading about the Holocaust and World War II, I still never cease to be amazed at man's inhumanity towards fellow men. World War I is not a war that I know too much about, and while the biggest fact I seem to remember is that it drug on for years and years, I had never even heard of the Armenian genocide. Some reviews I have read of this book stated that they found it confusing and that there is the feeling that Mr. Mustian should have given more background information to this event. While that might have been nice, it is totally unnecessary. I got the point quite quickly what was going on and why.

I found myself wondering at the strained relationship Emmett had with his two adult daughters. Wondering if all those repressed memories from his past, were there, not totally buried, in some way, to make him a hard and distant father during their growing up years? Now, a man in his 90's he is wanting/needing to make things right. Needing to find forgiveness from those currently in his life, and those from a past so long ago and forgotten.

What a tragic time in history.
What tragic loss of life.
What a tragic love story.

( I received this book from Lydia Hirt at Amy Einhorn for review.)