The Irish Novel 1960 - 2010

1991: Hugo Hamilton, The Last Shot

Also Published in 1990 Roddy Doyle, The Snapper; Aidan Carl Mathews, Muesli at Midnight; John McGahern, Amongst Women: Brian Moore, Lies of Silence; Francis Stuart, A Compendium of Lovers; Colm Tóibín, The South 1991 Hugo Hamilton, The Last Shot Of Hamilton’s seven novels, four are set in Germany. Both The Last Shot and Disguise (2008) have Second World War themes, while Surrogate City (1990) and The Love Test (1995) draw on life in contemporary Berlin. Two other novels – Headbanger (1996) and Sad Bastard (1998) – feature the south County Dublin cases of the odd-ball policeman Pat Coyne. Ireland’s new immigrants are the subject of Hand in the Fire (2010). A Dubliner, Hamilton (b. 1953) is also the author of a collection of short stories and of two remarkable memoirs, The Speckled People (2003) and The Sailor in the Wardrobe (2006; US title, The Harbor Boys). The first is essential reading on many counts, among them the background it provides to the author’s German connections. ‘A war is only over when the last shot has been fired, and who knows where the last shot of the Second World War was fired?’ (3) This question , posed early on in this soft-spoken, searching treatment of war’s complicated afterlife, reverberates throughout its two interleaved narratives , related but distinct, both set in Germany. The first narrative deals with the experiences of Bertha Sommer and Franz Kern as they make their way back home from Laun, in Bohemia, where they are stationed . Bertha has spent the war as a clerical worker with the Wehrmacht, Franz as a radio operator. The time is May 1945 (Germany surrendered on 7 May). As Soviet and American forces close in, and as local Czech resistance begins to assert itself, Franz offers to include Bertha in a plan to escape. But their participation in the plan misfires, and they eventually travel with the retreating army as far as the German border. There they find bicycles and set off together for their respective homes, Franz’s in Nuremberg and Bertha’s farther north in Kempen in the Ruhr. Their journey takes them away from major routes and through an unspoiled countryside which looks additionally welcoming in its early summer finery. This departure from the mainstream of war traffic and from landscapes typical of a defeated nation consolidates the qualities evident in Franz’s initial offer of assistance and Bertha’s acceptance of it. Their 110 THE IRISH NOVEL 1960–2010 way back would not be possible without a willingness to trust, a sense of mutual dependence and an implicit faith that the values of disinterest and unselfishness were still available. But their companionship amounts to more than simply an exercise in ethics. During a restorative rest by an idyllic lake – ‘In the middle of nowhere. In the middle of Germany’ (90) – Bertha and Franz find that they also still have their natures. Their bodies are still their own, and they celebrate this discovery with one another. Almost immediately, however, their expression of love is threatened by its antithesis. In Franz’s temporary absence, Bertha is set upon by two travellers heading east. Just as she is about to be raped, Franz finds her and shoots her attacker with the service weapon he has illegally retained (he also shoots the would-be rapist’s companion). ‘For the first time in his life, Franz Kern turned himself into a soldier’ (134), and whether or not in doing so he has fired the war’s last shot, he and Bertha ‘both realised that they had extended the war’ (142). Both the attack and the rescue have intimately marked Bertha with war’s violence, and her survival is burdened with complicated feelings of guilt. Although Franz sees his actions as the only ones conceivable under the circumstances, at Bertha’s request he throws away his gun. In a manner of speaking, their relationship has now been battletested , and their dream of a new life in America together remains intact. In fact, when they reach Nuremberg, Franz is all for going straight on to Hamburg and emigration, it being unlikely that his wife could have survived the devastating aerial bombardment of the city. But Bertha insists that he attempt to locate his wife, and when he succeeds in doing so she realises that Franz has found his home. In a further gesture of loyalty and disinterest, Bertha honours Franz’s commitments and continues back to her own family alone. As...