Leonard and Hungry Paul – Ronan Hession

Leonard and Hungry Paul both lead lives that for their thirty-odd years have had little impact on the wider world.  For Leonard that is accidental whereas for Hungry Paul it is more of a policy decision.  Both, if not self-sufficient, are happy just interacting with their own immediate family and each other.

But their steady state universe is changing.  Leonard’s ménage a deux with his long-widowed mother, which is all he has known, has ended with her sudden death.  Paul also lives at home with his parents but his sister, Grace, is about to get married and she worries about the family she will leave behind; particularly her brother who she sees as both adrift personally and a drag on their parents.

Leonard has a job writing content for children’s encyclopaedias; Paul does casual work as a relief postman.  Both enjoy a relaxing evening with a board game, over which matters of the day are discussed.

Stuff happens; small stuff in global terms but big for the boys.  A girl shows interest; a competition is entered; voluntary work is undertaken; Grace’s wedding looms.

It is gentle fare.  Situations are well-observed and characters and relationships well-portrayed.  There is a bit of humour and plenty of quirky ideas in the protagonist’s easy conversations; but the closest to peril is the possibility of mild embarrassment.

So what is learned by the end of the book?  The quiet life has merit, particularly in this helter-skelter world; and nice inoffensive characters can still be interesting enough to carry a novel.

Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally

Oskar Schindler is a bit of an enigma and remains so even after this biography in the form of a novel.  As Keneally says, such a medium seems suited to tell the story of such an elusive and ambiguous character.

The facts at least, are known – how a German businessman, to all appearances one of many looking to maximise their war profits on the back of military contracts and interned Jewish labour, contrived to keep safe over a thousand workers first in his factory in Krakow before then transporting them wholesale to a new location in Czechoslovakia as the Russian army crossed into Poland.

The motivation is more difficult to fathom.  Readers are left to draw their own conclusions from the narrative pieced together from information gleaned from the survivors and their personal recollections and testimonies.  It is clear that Schindler is no saint; he was a womaniser who liked the good life and knew how to grease the palms of the powerful.  But what drove him to use his charm, money and influence to save the lives of strangers rather than exploit them to enhance his fortune?  Was it a dislike of the Nazi mind-set and its thuggish proponents or an anti-establishment streak in his entrepreneurial soul that drove him to undermine, frustrate and ultimately defy the powers that be?

Keneally provides the evidence – clearly and largely unemotionally - leaving the verdict to the reader.

Fascinating, tragic and uplifting by turns, the book provides a rare microcosmic insight into the darkest times in modern European history.