When Grace married the genial and handsome Captain Leo Waterhouse in Australia in 1943, they were young, in love – and at war. Like many other young men and women, they were ready, willing and able to put the war effort first. They never seriously doubted that they would come through unscathed.But Leo never returned from a commando mission masterminded by his own hero figure, an eccentric and charismatic man who inspired total loyalty from those under his command. The world moved on to new alliances, leaving Grace, like so many widows, to bear the pain of losing the love of her life and wonder what it had all been for.
Sixty years on, Grace is still haunted by the tragedy of her doomed hero when the real story of his ill-fated secret mission is at last unearthed. As new fragments of her hero’s story emerge, Grace is forced to keep revising her picture of what happened to Leo and his fellow commandoes – until she learns about the final piece in the jigsaw, and the ultimate betrayal.
As absorbing as it is moving, this timely novel reminds us of the terrible costs of war as it questions why men so willingly and fatally adopt the heroic code.
Errol Flynn- Actor (Captain Leo Waterhouse was said to look like him)
Penelope Lively hails Thomas Keneally’s elegant tale of wartime self-sacrifice, The Widow and Her Hero
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/17/featuresreviews.guardianreview18
The Devil’s Disciple is, of course, about selfless sacrifice, and the last section of the novel turns on the evidence that appears decades later, including that wad of toilet paper. Wartime politics intrude – the mistrust between Australians and Americans – when the soft-spoken US Colonel Creed attempts to interfere with the plans for the second and fatal attempt on Singapore harbour. There have been betrayals, some of them self-serving. But, most of all, the assumptions of that time seem as archaic as the complacency of Empire. Grace remembers how Doucette used to recite Tennyson at parties: “Some work of noble note, may yet be done …” She sees the men as living according to Tennyson, whereas she and Dotty would live in the age of Auden and TS Eliot.
She is tormented by the thought that bravery was its own end, that the purpose was to be brave, even to be doomed.
Have a deeper look in these Quotes :
I didn’t want a hero. A person is never married to a hero- the heroic pose is not designed for ultimate domesticity.
(Page 264)
Just in case though, I put down all the love I can find in this sentence. For you, Grace. It’ll be a wonderful if we meet again. It’ll be a wonderful life.
(Page 261)
Sleepy can do that to you, sadder than a donkey in a cartoon one moment and the angel of death the next.
(Page 241)
And I’m telling you- I don’t know why- because it’s necessary for you know that I’ve lived through that and that I’m still Leo.
(Page 234)
I do agree with Lively that this book certainly opened my mind on the pains of war and the ultimate sacrifice. Yet, I am living in a generation that has seen war (in other countries than the one I inhibit), pain, loss and sacrifice.
Maybe the ultimate goal of the novel is to make us question things like “in what stage is an act considered of type betrayal?” or “why do the ultimate sacrifice?” or “why tragedy is unforgettable?”.
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