Touching the Wire: A doctor and nurse fight to save lives, and find love in a Nazi death-camp. Seventy years later the doctor’s granddaughter, intrigued by an enigmatic carving, discovers the secrets

I have read a great number of excellent books since the start of this year. Some I have reviewed and given five stars. Others, because they were written some while ago and/or by acclaimed writers, I did not feel qualified to comment publicly upon. None of them surpasses Touching The Wire: for the quality of the writing, the complexity of the plot, the depth of the characters. The subject matter is the unspeakable horrors perpetrated in central Europe between 1940 and 1945. The theme is forgiveness.

Not that either I or Ms. Bryn would dare to suggest that those responsible for such inhumanity deserve forgiveness. But it is possible, nay, necessary, to believe that among those who were motivated by pure evil there were some who hated what they were doing: did it only out of a belief that, by remaining alive, they might be able to work behind the scenes to protect some of the victims from some small part of the nightmare. Refusal meant death and with it the removal of that opportunity, however slight, to do some small measure of good in an environment of utmost evil.
(Note: purchased from Amazon.co.uk)

Given that context, it is inevitable that some of the passages in this book are painful to read. I have written elsewhere (https://franklparker.com/2016/09/14/i...) about the difficulties for an author writing about what I called, after Stephen Marcus, “inconceivable realities”. I cited Rachel Billingon's Glory (one of the books I feel unqualified to review, given Ms Billington's pedigree) and Jodi Picoult's The Story Teller.

The former describes the ill-conceived and ill-fated invasion of Gallipoli by British and Commonwealth forces in 1915. The latter, like Touching The Wire, deals with the persecution of East European Jews, from the humiliations of the Warsaw Ghetto to the horrors of the extermination camps. Ms Bryn's novel covers a different aspect of the activities in those camps: the medical experiments conducted by the evil Dr Mengele, another set of inconceivable realities.

Ms Bryn does not hold back from describing the inhuman cruelty to be found in the nightmare surroundings of Auschwitz. Her novel is told in two parts. In the first section a man who collaborated in those experiments is living under an assumed identity in England in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We follow him as he remembers his previous life and prepares clues he hopes will reveal the truth.

The second part is set in the present day as his 40 year old grand-daughter follows those clues. The way Ms Bryn has constructed these clues will delight anyone who loves cryptic puzzles. This section also includes a failing marriage and the guilt that surrounds it and the flowering of new love. It ends with yet more harrowing revelations about the experiments as the unraveled clues reveal the truth.

In my blog post I concluded by saying: “If reading fantasy horrors, watching zombie movies, or, indeed, the horrors of modern warfare shown nightly on our television screens, dulls our senses, then it is surely the duty of the writer of historical fiction to remind readers of the real horrors endured by ordinary people.” In Touching The Wire Ms Bryn has done just that. Her book is, rightly, dedicated “to the memory ... of all those who have suffered at the hand of tyranny.”

At the end of my review of Ms Picoult's book I wrote: “This is a work of fiction, has the horror been overplayed? Will it be too easy for holocaust deniers to dismiss it because it is fiction? For anyone of my generation, old enough to have seen the newsreel footage of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwauld, Picoult's depiction of the events is all too believable. But, for younger generations for whom WW II is just another episode in history; people who love to revel in dark fantasies of zombies and vampires, will this be any more than mere entertainment?

I went on to add: “This is history whose lessons we need to learn, although, as one of her characters remarks, subsequent events suggest we have yet to do so. It is also, at its core, a novel about the power of forgiveness. And the optimist in me cannot help but think that those same 'subsequent events' also demonstrate that forgiveness is possible though we forget at our peril.”

The same remarks apply to Ms Bryn's novel. She aims to answer the question “must we live our lives plagued with guilt, or can we find the strength to forgive ourselves?” Forgiveness is necessary for peace of mind. To forget is to demean the sacrifice of those who endured the inconceivable realities of the past.

Rebecca Bryn is a distinguished author. This book had me confused, then intrigued and ultimately hooked. One minute I was reading about World War 2. The next minute they were watching television. I assumed that the author’s research was deficient. Whilst reading part 2, I realized that there were 2 different, carefully intertwined scenes. Mrs Bryn introduced a love scene amid all the horrendous experiences where people were dying due to poor sanitation and lack of food and medication. Although this is fiction it is well researched.

I bought this book some time ago but I kept putting off opening it because of the content. I am so glad I worked up the courage to read it because painful as it was, it tells of a time in the world’s history that needs to be remembered.
It was often hard to continue to the next page and the events are overwhelmingly heartbreaking. The author has written her characters in a way that they across as being totally believable in their reactions. There was the combination of love and hate, cruelty and kindness, acceptance and hope.
[[ASIN:1502912600 Touching the Wire: A doctor and nurse fight to save lives, and find love in a Nazi death-camp. Seventy years later the doctor's granddaughter, intrigued by an enigmatic carving, discovers the secrets]]

Stunningly written - I cannot speak highly enough about this incredible book! The story is crafted beautifully, the characters jump out at the reader, the way the story weaves and turns is excellent. The story portrays a harrowing episode of history, combined with modern day scenarios. Well done Rebecca. I had bought this on Kindle, now I will get the paperback and it will have pride of place on my book shelf.'