2021-12-06
Shaw and Orey offer a coming-of-age World War II story as seen through the eyes of a French Jewish teenager with a gift for music.
Benjamin Cohen celebrates his bar mitzvah in Rouen, France, just as the Nazis begin their assault on the country in 1940. As a gift, he receives a cockatiel that he eventually names Frère Jacques, in whom he often confides revealing details of his life. As the second son of a doctor, Benjamin doesn’t have the clear ambitions of his father or his older brother, Émile, his parents’ favorite child, who’s studying for a future career in medicine. As the German military takes over the town, Émile leaves his studies to work for the French Resistance, unbeknownst to his family. Meanwhile, Benjamin excels at playing the violin, but as he listens to sounds of the carillon playing at a nearby cathedral, he yearns to learn how to play it himself. Benjamin convinces M. deTarot, the carillonneur at St. Julian’s, to teach him all he knows about the instrument. At the cathedral, Benjamin calls himself Benjamin Simone, as he believes it sounds “more French”; he meets Marie-Noëlle, who also plays music there, and, later, while exploring hidden passageways and rooms at St. Julian’s, he becomes acquainted with Jacques-Milan, a man with significant war injuries. M. deTarot’s declining health eventually requires Benjamin to play the carillon for weekly concerts at a critical juncture in the story. Over the course of this novel, Shaw and Orey present a tale of secrets, love, and hope in which Benjamin must quickly mature as war rages around him. Each of the secondary characters is revealed as a complex human being, and their stories effectively intertwine with Benjamin’s. As the narrative goes on, the authors express the tragedy of war in dramatic detail through the teenager’s diary entries, which he writes with the encouragement of his psychotherapist to help with stress; along the way, salient details about Rouen and Benjamin’s family members are revealed.
An intriguing and worthy novel that benefits from its youthful perspective.
