Absorbing tale of love

The chapel at the edge of the world
Kristen Mckenzie
Hachette,
2010, pp 384,
Rs. 375

Kirsten McKenzie’s debut novel, The Chapel at the Edge of the World, employs this theme impressively to come up with an absorbing tale of love’s trials and triumphs in the face of war.

The period is 1940s, and Italy is fighting on the German side in the Second World War. Emilio, an Italian soldier, is captured with 550 others and packed off to the island of Lamb Holm in Orkney, Scotland as a prisoner of war.

In faraway Italy, his fiancée Rosa is learning to face life on her own amidst dwindling hope of Emilio’s return. Pietro, Rosa and Emilio’s childhood friend, is involved in a secret movement against the fascist government to save Italy from its German occupiers.

Revolving around these three central characters, The Chapel… explores a battle of a different kind, that of emotions, fought not on the field, but in the depths of the human heart.

A striking feature of Kirsten’s writing is her talent for vivid imagery which lends a unique visual quality to her words. This feature, though initially threatens to take away the joy of imagination from the reader, makes the book more gripping as the story progresses.

An artist at heart, Emilio deals with the spirit-breaking monotony, gloom and physical ordeals at the prisoners’ camp by finding refuge in art and motivates his companions to join him in building a chapel on the island. As the chapel is formed from salvaged materials, as a symbol of hope in the otherwise grey existence of prisoners, Emilio’s inner world too is transformed.

“Do you ever wonder,” his fellow prisoner Bertoldo asks Emilio, “when you go back, whether the people you return to will be the same people you left?” And that is Emilio’s deeper fear too as he senses the subtle changes in Rosa, reflected in her irregular letters to him. Emilio’s absence and Pietro’s growing presence in Rosa’s life bring her face to face with her own sense of vacuum which now seems to be slowly filling, by her admiration for Pietro’s devotion towards his ideals, something which she can never expect from Emilio. As her love for Pietro threatens to consume her, she has to decide between a stable home life with Emilio and a risky but utterly alive and passionate future with Pietro. But, will destiny even let her make this choice?

Kirsten’s protagonists are convincing, as they portray the visceral longings of the human spirit and the price one has to pay to fulfill them.

Other main characters in the book, including Margherita, Rosa’s mother, Antonio, Pietro’s companion in the Resistance Movement, and Rachele, Rosa’s friend, whose lust for life inspires awe in Rosa, are fleshed out well by the author. But, the most interesting of them all is Bertoldo, whose passionate outbursts in captivity, so in contrast with Emilio’s quiet and saintly detachment from the prison conditions, add a touch of life to the otherwise gloomy description of the camp.

Kirsten’s writing is poetic which greatly enhances the depiction of the pathos of her characters. The Chapel at the Edge of the World is touching, engaging and compelling without trying to be showy and Kirsten McKenzie is undoubtedly a writer to watch out for!