Product Description

A brilliant exploration of sexual obsession and human frailty in a country gripped by war. In a small town in occupied France during World War II, a teacher of German is recruited by the Gestapo to translate sensitive documents. Every week, waiting for the next assignment, our narrator sits outside the commandant's office and watches prisoners being led to detention cells before being deported. Always existing on the fringes of life, caring only for books, the teacher has never done anything heroic. And certainly this is no time to get entangled in other people's problems. But one day a stunning Jewish soldier is among the prisoners. His name is Herman and the teacher recognizes him from their lives before the war. In an unprecedented act of boldness, the teacher sneaks Herman out of headquarters, brings him home, and hides him in the cellar, along with a cache of banned books. So begins an extraordinary and shattering affair in which two people and two antagonistic languages, Yiddish and German, are magnetically attracted. In a tour de force of novelistic technique, Gilles Rozier never reveals the gender of his narrator--opening the question of how many levels of transgression and risk the teacher is taking by hiding Herman. THE MERCY ROOM is an exquisite novel about the power of desire and the competing forces of good or ill in the heart of each of us.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #862704 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 156 pages

Amazon.com Review
Gilles Rozier's breathtaking third novel The Mercy Room is ample demonstration that a main character doesn't need to be lovable, but only closely observed and adroitly, somewhat ruthlessly portrayed. Set in a small town in occupied France during World War II, The Mercy Room is so precisely placed inside the consciousness of its first-person narrator, an emotionally buttoned-down teacher of German, that it feel claustrophobic, like the "mercy room" in which much of its action occurs. The teacher, whose sex we never learn, has only two passions: for German literature (especially by authors forbidden by the Nazis--Thomas Mann, Heinrich Heine) and for the young French soldier who, before the occupation, had delivered documents to be translated by the narrator for the local military leaders. Now the narrator translates for the German commandant instead. In a dark corridor of the Gestapo offices, waiting for the latest assignment, he or she catches sight of the young French soldier, "brought there by fate," in a cluster of Jews being processed for deportation. It is surprisingly easy to lead him away from the group and out of the building while the German guards are busy.

And so the narrator, who conceals the beloved in a hidden, dirt-floored reading room in his or her cellar, begins a great love affair--a contrast in almost every way from the narrator's bloodless, unconsummated marriage. An act so personal as saving one's secret beloved and keeping him alive for two years in a cellar room may not be exactly heroic, as the narrator admits. Soon after his arrival, the narrator brought down to the captive two shirts from his or her dead father's wardrobe, and two sets of underwear--one belonging to the narrator and another to the narrator's spouse, Jude.

I liked to think of him clad alternatingly in men¹s and women's undergarments beneath his trousers; it was a mild way of humiliating him. Blame it on the war but I wanted to maintain a certain ascendancy over him, make his life easier but not too easy, in the same way as you might keep a canary in a cage and pretend you¹ve forgotten to change its water just so that it can't bathe properly. I could have done much worse, for he was at my mercy.

But power, in a love affair, is no simple matter. The narrator still burns for the young soldier. "The dim light down there hid him from me and increased my desire, just as the darkness makes an amusement park ghost train exciting. But what about him? Was he grateful to me for saving him; would that be enough to win him over?"

While the narrator's uncertain gender deliciously complicates the relationship between the soldier and his rescuer/captor, the shell game of pronouns and descriptions required to maintain this gender-ambiguous status may annoy some readers. But it also has the effect of implicating the reader in the murky ethics of the situation, since it is the reader's decision, at any moment, which direction the gender should go. It's a gimmick, yes, like the backward narrative of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, but one which heightens the pathos of an almost unbearably affecting story. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
Thought provoking but ultimately disappointing, this novel by the director of the Center for Yiddish Culture in Paris attempts to probe the psyche of a Vichy collaborator who falls in love with a Jew and hides him in the family cellar. In a small French hometown, the narrator, who remains nameless—and whose gender also remains unspecified throughout, though some hints are dropped—teaches German at the local girls' grammar school and also translates documents for the Gestapo. Cold and unfeeling, the narrator can only summon up passion for German language and literature, particularly for forbidden works by Jewish authors like Mann and Heine. As the war rages on, the narrator drives his or her neglected spouse to commit suicide; obsesses about a sister's boisterous sex life with her Nazi boyfriend; and sneaks a Jew, Herman, out of Gestapo headquarters and into the narrator's cellar, where the two become lovers. When they aren't having sex, they're discussing literature: Herman learns German and the narrator becomes expert in Yiddish. In probing the thin line between heroism and collaboration, Rozier draws coy parallels between the otherness of homosexuals and that of Jews in Nazi Germany. While that may seem daring, or titillating, in Europe, it's unlikely to win fans here. (Mar. 21)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* This haunting and, at times, harrowing novel, set in France during the German occupation of the 1940s, is a variation of the Anne Frank story. The narrator lives in a small town, in the family house, where the mother and sister also live; the father is a prisoner of war in Germany. The narrator teaches German at the local school and regards the literature in that language to be the supreme passion of life. That is, until one day when the narrator, awaiting a translation assignment from the local gestapo agency, lays eyes on an attractive young man--Jewish--who obviously is being taken off. The narrator whisks the young man away and stashes him in the wine cellar of the family home. There the young man lives, hidden away, for more than two years--during which the narrator and he fall in love and have a torrid sexual relationship. But as the end of the war approaches, the young man loses patience with his captivity, and an escape is planned, but things don't go as he and the narrator had outlined. Adding allure to the drama is that the gender of the narrator is never revealed; is this a heterosexual or homosexual affair? We never need to know, for this gripping story transcends such specifics. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Customer Reviews

Intrigue and drama!
The unnamed teacher/narrator of German lives in a town in occupied France during World War II. The teacher (whose gender is unknown) cares only for literature, and marries, perhaps because it is expected. It is certainly not to partake in a sexual relationship as the marriage isn't consummated in eight years.

The teacher is recruited by the Nazis to translate documents for them. Each time the teacher goes to the commandant's office to wait for the assignment, the teacher watches as prisoners are led to detention cells before deportation. The teacher recognized some of the prisoners as former neighbors.

The teacher exists primarily through literature. Other than personal difficulties, the war doesn't seem to impact the teacher. Certainly it hasn't required involvement, heroic or otherwise.

Then one day the teacher recognizes a Jewish soldier among the prisoners and sneaks the soldier (Herman) out of the headquarters. The teacher brings Herman home and hides him in the cellar of the teacher's family home where a torrid affair takes place under the "noses" of the family and an SS man who was having an affair with the teacher's sister.

The Mercy Room is stunning, yet disturbing on many levels. The story is unique and interesting but is filled with such a feeling of hopelessness and sadness. The lovers are doomed from the beginning and the family is shattered by the war and by a family member's collaboration with the Nazis. And the fact that the reader doesn't know the gender of the narrator conjures up different scenarios that change, depending upon the sex assigned by the reader to the narrator at that moment.

The Mercy Room is a relatively short but powerful novel and its length serves it well. A longer story might unravel, as it would be difficult to keep the narrator's gender a secret indefinitely.

Armchair Interviews says: If you enjoy intrigue, drama and a well-written story, The Mercy Room would be an enjoyable read.

The Quality Of Mercy, Strained
Gilles Rozier (and his extraordinarily fine translator Anthea Bell) presents one of the more strangely involving stories of the French Occupation and Resistance during World War II. This brief (147 pages) novel is not only exquisitely written, it is terse, rich in mysteries and techniques, and raises more questions than it answers. Some may dismiss Rozier's novel as a gimmick: the narrator is never identified with a name or a gender and that identification is left completely up to the reader. Are we reading a story about an icy female German teacher who seduces/befriends a Jewish soldier into her protective cellar hideaway, or are we following a closeted gay man whose frustrations with life in the clime of the country during war encourage him to seduce/befriend a sensuous potential lover into the sanctity of his cellar with the hopes of eventually savoring the sexual relationship which has been denied him? The choice is the reader's option. For this reader the second alternative makes the story far more powerful on many levels and thus the male/male relationship is the road of interpretation elected.

In a small French town during the Occupation lives a family: the father has been extricated by the Nazis, the mother tends to the home, the sister Anne lusts upstairs taking a SS officer Volker as her constant daily lover, the sister Isabelle remains out of the picture, and the other 'child' is our narrator. He (my choice) is a brilliant scholar whose chief loves in life are books, German literature and language (especially the works of Nazi forbidden Thomas Mann and Heinrich Heine). As a teacher in the local school his aptitudes are recognized and he is selected to translate sensitive documents for the Nazis. He has had one 'friend', one Hans Joachim, a handsome German who disappears when the Resistance and the Occupation clash. He agrees to marry one Jude, consenting to fulfill a family duty but completely denying any physical or emotional contact with her. His 'work' is delivered for translation by a stunningly handsome German officer Herman who hums Chopin while our narrator works, creating a strong sense of sexual tension and desire.

When our narrator is moved to the halls of the Nazis to await pickup and delivery of the desired documents he watches the towns Jews march past him, surely on their way to railroad cars, camps, and extermination. When Herman appears in the line with these condemned Jews our narrator arranges to have him escape to the home of the narrator where he is sequestered in the cellar in a library full of books. Herman speaks and reads Yiddish, loves Heine as much as our narrator, and after our narrator's successfully engineered capture of Herman's private Heine book from his previous apartment, Herman at last shows the sensual, physical attraction to our narrator and they begin a blissful affair, with sexual encounters partially supplanting their mutual love for Heine. Herman teaches our narrator Yiddish in exchange for what becomes an over two-year concealment as a Jew in hiding from the Nazis - accepting food, shelter and reading forbidden books and performing forbidden sexual acts in exchange.

As the war pulses on, Jude commits suicide out of longing for a normal marriage bed, our narrator eventually murders the SS Volker (whose sexual couplings with Anne disgust the family who happens to be protected by the officer's daily visits), dispenses with his body in the same cellar, a fact that creates a schism between the two lovers. When the Liberation finally arrives our narrator helps Herman to escape in the SS uniform disrobed from Volker, but the long awaited escape is thwarted by Herman's being killed by the Resistance. And our narrator ages, remembering the aspects of the French Occupation that reveal just how delicate was the quality of mercy in the time of war.

Rozier's writing is pungent, passionate when the mood calls for it, and coolly isolated when the events of the life in France during the war are described. It is a genuinely involving story and whether the reader elects to see the narrator as male or female makes no difference in the power of the events that occur. This is one of those books that, once opened, glues the reader to the pages in a one evening's read. It is startlingly effective. Grady Harp, November 06

Realistic look at desperation and hardships
Reviewed by Joanne Benham 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.