It’s seems often the case that trying to tell a story based very much on a true event doesn’t always succeed as dramatically as a purely fictional story. This was the case for me with My Father’s House and I found it a bit dry in parts despite its obvious very inspiring background

An enjoyable book although at times I did feel and bit lost but I enjoyed it so I persisted. Rome during WW2 and a group of people directed and supported by a priest help people to escape the nazi invaders into Rome. Each character speaks in their own voice and tells their stories. Nicely done. Great pace and good descriptions - worth reading definitely.

Wow - what a book! This story got right inside my head and will no doubt stay with me for a very long time. The writing is exquisite and the characters are so finely drawn that they come alive, making the narrative so vivid. At times the tale was very hard to read and became nightmare inducing! I would recommend this book very highly.

“My Father’s House” is a historical thriller which is made all the more intriguing as it is based on a true story. It is set in German occupied Rome in 1943 and follows a cast of characters who have come together to hide escaped prisoners of war and ultimately to help them reach safety. This group is led by Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish priest based at the Vatican which is struggling to hold onto it’s neutrality. The German occupiers are led by SS officer Paul Hauptmann who terrorises the public and is under increasing pressure from the Nazi leadership to stop the “escape line.”

This book is a real page turner and I’m sure it will appeal to fans of thrillers and those interested in the Second World War alike. I would say that I found some of the writing a bit abrupt - it didn’t feel like it quite flowed right. And it was almost too subtle. Some of the twists and turns of the plot are told so quickly and with so little emphasis that I found myself having to re-read them to check I hadn’t misunderstood. But overall I enjoyed it and the fact that it has it’s basis in truth I found really fascinating.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

This book is inspired by the true story of Monsignor O'Falherty,an Irish priest working in the Vatican who helped smuggle Jews and POW'S out of Italy during WW2.What a brave story,hiding so many people from the Nazi's in the Vatican I hadn't heard of this story before but it is a wonderful moving story .Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC .

Joseph O’Connor’s new novel My Father’s House, published in the UK today, is based on the true story of Hugh O’Flaherty, a Catholic priest who helped thousands of Jews and Allied prisoners of war to escape from Italy during World War II. This is the third book I’ve read by O’Connor (the others are Shadowplay, about the author Bram Stoker and the actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, and Ghost Light, which explores the relationship between the playwright John Millington Synge and the actress Molly Allgood) and I think it’s the best of the three.

The main part of the novel is set in 1943. Born and raised in Ireland, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty is serving in Vatican City during the war – a neutral territory within Nazi-occupied Rome. As an official Vatican visitor to Italy’s prisoner of war camps, Hugh has been trying to improve conditions for the prisoners, but his actions mark him out as an Allied sympathiser and his superiors prevent him from carrying out any more visits in case he makes the Vatican a Nazi target. However, Hugh won’t be stopped that easily and soon he has set up an Escape Line, successfully smuggling Jews and escaped prisoners out of Rome right under the eyes of the Nazis.

The biggest escape mission yet – the ‘Rendimento’ – has been arranged for Christmas Eve, 1943. In the hope that the Gestapo will be less vigilant on this particular night, Hugh and his group of courageous volunteers have put elaborate plans in place to move a large number of people out of the city under the cover of darkness. As we count down the days and hours leading up to the mission, we also get to know each member of Hugh’s team and how they came to be involved in the Escape Line.

The group use the cover of meeting for ‘choir practice’ and this is where they discuss their plans and receive their instructions – carefully coded, of course, as the Nazis have eyes and ears everywhere. One Nazi in particular is getting too close for comfort; he is Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann, who already has his eye on Hugh due to the camp visits and is starting to close in on the Choir and the Rendimento. But although Hauptmann is our villain, O’Connor gives him a surprising amount of depth, describing his home life and his relationship with his wife and children. This reminder that Nazi officers were often also family men leading normal domestic lives just makes Hauptmann’s behaviour feel even more chilling and shocking.

As the clock ticks down on Christmas Eve, the suspense increases as we are kept wondering whether the mission will succeed. However, the chapters describing the build-up to the Rendimento are interspersed with other chapters in which each member of the Choir introduces themselves and their background and tells us how they met Hugh and joined his group. I wasn’t very keen on this structure as I felt that it broke the flow of the story and took away some of the tension, but it was still interesting to hear their different voices (some of which I found more convincingly written than others). They included Sir D’Arcy Osborne, the British envoy to the Holy See, and his butler John May, diplomat’s wife Delia Kiernan, and escaped soldier Sam Derry – all of whom were real people.

I had never read anything about Hugh O’Flaherty and his work until now, so I’m pleased to have had the chance to learn something new. Although My Father’s House is a complete novel in itself, it’s apparently the first in an Escape Line trilogy – I’ll be looking out for the next one and will be interested to see if it’s going to focus on a different member of the group this time.

My Father’s House is a novel based on a true story (very loosely based, O’Connor emphasises in an author’s note). Father Hugh O’Flaherty is an Irish priest and high-ranking official in the Vatican during the Nazi occupation of Rome. After seeing, via his official role, the horrors of the prisoner-of-war camps, he forms a group of conspirators, including a popular Irish singer who is married to a diplomat, a British musician turned diplomat’s batman, and an Italian contessa. They are part of a network helping escaped prisoners to hide out in, and eventually get away from, the Vatican and Rome.

They operate under the cover of a choir which meets in the Vatican and are planning a mission on Christmas Eve 1943 (code-named a ‘Rendimento’, the Italian for performance). The plan is to make a number of money drops across Rome so it can be distributed to the escapees and those who help them.

The Vatican is neutral territory but the non-Italian choir members are constrained in their movements into the wider city (O’Flaherty needs a pass even to visit his barber). Paul Hauptmann, the Gestapo commander in Rome, is under pressure to staunch the flow of escapees. Capture would mean torture and death at the hands of the Nazis.

While many of the choir members are privileged (socially or because of their diplomatic status or both), each is an outsider in their way, with different motivations. We also see the courage of escaped prisoners and Italian citizens in the network, for whom the stakes may be even higher.

O’Flaherty is a pleasingly complex character. Intellectual and spiritual, able to talk easily with people of all classes and nationalities, he is bullish in his dealings with the Nazis, a conspirator hiding in plain sight. He does make decisions which I don’t fully understand but that makes him more real and human.

The story unfolds both in 1943, and in chapters where various members of the choir give their account many years later. This is clever because it tells you that the person speaking, at least, has survived, and makes you wonder about the rest. It also allows them to offer commentary and insights given on reflection, when all details of what occurred are known.

O’Connor’s prose is wonderful. Among the brutal privations, the unseen sacrifices, the corruption and compromises, he captures the spirit of Rome — and the sheer oddity of life in the Vatican. The night of the Rendimento, the quiet of the city on Christmas Eve, is particularly haunting.

I wasn’t sure the mano-a-mano element between Hauptmann and O’Flaherty was necessary and the lengthy resolution, for me, detracted from rather than added to the whole, but these are quibbles. My Father’s House is a moving, beautifully written and pacy literary thriller.
*
I received a copy of My Father’s House from the publisher via NetGalley.

Set in Rome in the early 1940’s this is the story of a brave band of people, known as the choir, who aid the escape of allied prisoners of war. Based on a true story and using real characters the book paints a picture of life in Rome under German occupation.. The plot is woven round actual events and uses fictional later accounts from the main characters to give the reader a sense of the bravery of the people involved.
This book is well written and a must for those who enjoy reading books set in the WWII..

Thank you to #Netgalley & #PenguinRandomHouse for an eARC of My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor in return for an honest review.
My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor is a book of many parts & completely unputdownable.
Based on the activities of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty an Irish priest based in the Vatican during the Nazi Occupation of Rome in 1943, the story flows with the ease of a well paced thriller. Monsignor O'Flahertys nemesis is the SS Commandant Paul Hauptmann.The novel includes real life characters as well as fictionalised ones.

The story leads us to Christmas Eve 1943 when Monsignor O'Flaherty & his diverse range of co-conspirators must deliver cash to aid the escape of various groups of people who need to leave Rome urgently. Hugh & his group are known as The Choir & the dispersal of the cash as the "rendimento" or performance.
This is a powerful story of how a group of people came together in the face of ridiculous odds to help those who needed it most. In total over 6,000 people were helped by HOF & his comrades. Everybody had a different reason for putting their lives on the line but all were united in the common goal of defeating the Nazis.
Conditions in Rome deteriorated quickly after the Nazis invaded. Rome itself plays an integral role in the success of the co-conspirators efforts - the narrow alleys, the rooftops, the subterranean passageways, the shops, the inhabitants all contributed in their own way to disrupt & discourage the Nazis.
Joseph O'Connor orchestrates the novel like a maestro. The language he uses to create a flowing narrative, the layers of personality as we come to know the characters on both sides is simply incredible. I think My Father's House defies genre classification. Yes it is literary but it is also historical. It is fiction written at a level that would make even non-writers envious but begging for more. The detail & research are superb but so too are the creation of tension & the delineation of good and evil.
As Hauptmann says
" A story is a bottle, a way of storing something valuable. What is printed on the label is only part of the preciousness"

I recommend #MyFathersHouse 100% & hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Unfortunately I found this quite a dry read, even when there was action happening I did not feel any suspense and so it took me a while to get through it, it did pick up near the end but not enough to win me over

I am shamefacedly admitting I knew nothing about the inspiration for Irish writer Joseph O’Connor’s new novel – Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a Priest based at the Vatican at the time of Rome’s takeover by the Nazis who was responsible for the saving of some 6,500 lives through the Escape Line, which ran from the neutral Vatican City, housing and hiding soldiers, escaped Prisoners Of War, Jews and others the Nazi regime took against.
This is a fictional account which leads up to a mission, known as a Rendimento, planned for Christmas Eve 1943. O’Flaherty was supported by a group who met on the pretext of choral singing and some of these are interviewed in the early 1960s and their accounts of what happened runs alongside a third person narrative. O’Connor writes beautifully with multi-sensory descriptions being layered to build a picture of events and the tale he tells here is involving and often thrilling. He seems more at pains to ensure we know we are reading fiction than the average historical novelist. I might be wrong here but from a quick glance at the true events online I think he has changed the identity of the main threat to the mission, a German officer who viewed O’Flaherty as his nemesis. If this is so, this fictional creation allows the author greater freedom in portraying the evil within this man.
Monsignor O’Flaherty is the lifeblood of this novel but I think I might have appreciated further fleshing out of some of the supporting characters within the choir. From their interviews I wasn’t always clear who was talking and this narrative structure removed them slightly from the action although I do acknowledge that anonymity at this time was a prerequisite for survival.
I was impressed by this strong novel but I must admit that it didn’t quite get me the way the author’s evocative recreation of a Victorian theatrical world inhabited by Bram Stoker in 2019’s “Shadowplay” did which made it into my Top 5 Books of that year.
My Father’s House will be published on 26th January by Harvill Secker. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Joseph O'Connor's latest novel is based on a true story and is set at the heart of Rome's Escape Line during WW2.

So many things drew me to into this book. It's a fast paced read which kept me turning the pages into the small hours. The writing is wonderful and evoked such a strong sense of the tension in Rome - the danger and uncertainty of life in the city, the threat of violence, the fear. I loved the different voices as it moved between characters and also how different each of the narrators were. The story itself is the most wonderful and nail-biting tale of extraordinary people, courage and resistance and it taught me something new as I didn't know anything about The Escape Line before I read it.

As an added bonus it's the first book in a planned trilogy so there is more to look forward to and I can't wait to find out how that will play out.

'My Father's House' is published on the 26th January.

Thanks to @netgalleyuk @randomhouse and @vintage for an ARC of this book.

My Father's House is based on factual events in Vactian City during Nazi Occupation. This is a well researched enjoyable storyline with Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty portrayed wonderfully. An educational read shows the amazing bravery of ordinary people who risked their lives to rescue others.

A man is running through the streets of Rome, delivering US$. One slip and he will die, slowly, because it’s 1943 and the Nazis control Italy. He isn’t ideal for the task, in fact he’s third choice, but the first two are ruled out for non-related reasons, so it’s down to him. The man is part of a covert group created and led by Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty. Hugh should not be involved in this conflict because he is a priest (the Pope has ruled on this), Irish (The Republic is a neutral country), and based inside Vatican City (a neutral state, wholely situated inside Rome but not part of Italy). The sole purpose of the group is to recover, sequester and safely move escaped POWs, currently hidden all over Rome, into rural Italy and hence out of the country. The group is an eclectic mix including a Contessa, the UK’s ambassador to the Vatican, an RA officer disguised as a cleric, and a number of locals. They meet regularly inside the Vatican in the guise of a choir; while they practice singing, Hugh whispers specific plans to each individual. Only he knows everything, so if anyone is caught they can only reveal a small part of the operation. The Gestapo, under the command of Obersturmbannfurher Paul Hauptmann are aware that there is an organisation doing this, and strongly suspect Hugh of being involved, but they cannot enter Vatican City. The money being dropped off is to bribe appropriate people, because on this particular night, Christmas Eve, they intend to move almost every hidden person, ahead of a major search planned by the Germans. This operation is known to the choir and the reader as Rendimento (Italian for Performance, appropriate word for a choir’s activity).
This is a complicated, information packed, story with a rather simple plot. However, that simplicity is because it is based on true events and all of the principal characters are real; whether Irish, Italian, Swiss, English, or German. They are all well drawn within the book, foibles, flaws, loves, hates all there and, although the writer probably has personal feelings about the people and the events, this is a work of scholarship so personal views don’t colour the narrative. Even Hauptmann is shown to have a human side, with a loving family life, albeit balanced with a love of torture and casual, lethal, violence. There is a continuous sense of tension, not surprising, given the situation. Will the cat and mouse duel between Hugh and Hauptmann end well? Will the running man complete his task? Will all that rehearsal result in a successful “Performance”?
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

Joseph O'Connor is a fantastic storyteller, My Father's House is based on factual events in Vatican City during Nazi occupation but he brings the characters and events beautifully to life. An unlikely band of people come together and show amazing courage and strength to assist escaped POW, Partisan's and others threatened by the Nazi occupation. You are rooting so hard for them to succeed and the suspence created leaves you with no idea how the story will end.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read My Father's House.

Inspired by real events, fantastic and tense historical novel set in Rome in WWII. Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty is a wonderful character I won't forget any time soon.

It moved me to tears.

When you write such an intimate historical novel you have both a duty to characters and to the readers. I feel author Joseph O’Connor succeeds on each count. He has taken facts and people and re-imagined the struggle in war-time Rome.

I was drawn to the novel as I know so little about Italian resistance and the plight of POWs held by the Germans in Italy. Most novels I have read have centred on Paris and escape routes in France.

It was also interesting to be presented with the response to Rome’s capture by the Nazi’s and the consequences for the Vatican.

This is a well conceived novel which has a group of individuals led by Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty to find sanctuary and safety for escaped prisoners of war.

Working in real time on Christmas Eve 1943 leading up to a crucial operation across Rome, the story is enhance by later interviews with some of the participants remembering their wartime exploits.

This is such a compelling and intense read.

It details raw courage and the selfish acts of all those who worked with Hugh to raise funds and find accommodation for the growing number of escapees. The book has you hooked with that sense of impending danger and arrest by the Gestapo.

The glory and the incandescence of the human spirit shines so much brighter against the darkness of the failed Fascist ideology. A 5 star review of a book and an individual who will live long in my memory.

This story is set in the Vatican in September 1943, when Germany occupy Rome.

The book is based on the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty. He wants to help smuggle out Diplomats, Jews and Allied prisoners to safety. The code name of the mission is Rendimento and the plan is to smuggle them all out on Christmas Eve, 1943.

An extremely dangerous mission that could have been thwarted at any moment.

It is an educational read and showed the passion and bravery of others. Plenty of characters to get your teeth into.

My thanks to Random House U.K. and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

A most enlightening story of the role of the Vatican with Rome under Nazi occupation. Being an independent state, and fearing invasion the Pope has to avoid giving the Germans any excuse to invade, How Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty living in the Vatican. with a small band of helpers organised the escape of many thousands of escaped POWs and others to avoid capture by the Germans by giving them hidden refuge, even within the walls of the Vatican and then helping many to escape the country. The work also caused him to frequently venture across the Vatican border into German occupied Rome avoiding capture into the hands of the Gestapo and surviving safely until the end of thr war. Not an easy read as the story is formed by joining the dots of witness accounts of incidents together to form the whole.

Although undoubtedly well researched and well written I just couldn't get into this book at all. I found it a difficult read with the prose used and I'm sorry to say that I didn't finish the book.