THE LAMB'S WAR

by Jan de Hartog ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 9, 1979

After a crude but effective concentration-camp opening--sort of a poor man's Sophie's Choice--this follow-up to de Hartog's more explicitly theological The Peaceable Kingdom (1971) slips into a listless mixture of dubious psychology, bald melodrama, tedious soap opera, and muddled theme-waving. 1944: Laura Martens, utterly innocent daughter of a Dutch Quaker imprisoned for trying to save Jews, tries to visit her father at Camp Schwalbenbach--but the sadistic commandant starts to rape her in front of her father, and Laura then sees her father mauled to death by the camp dog. Her reaction? Catatonia plus amnesia; and the decent young German camp doctor takes her in, protects her, makes her his (willing and adoring) mistress. Very cozy--but when the camp is liberated a year later, Laura sees her lover die, is tarred as a ""Nazi whore"" by camp survivors, and still has that nasty amnesia. Then: enter Boniface Baker, a U.S. Quaker medic who offers to marry Laura temporarily so she can get to the U.S. for psychiatric treatment and a new life with her midwest grandma. So on to America, where Laura is a total pain: she now, implausibly, talks nonstop, unaccented U.S. gutter-slang; she refuses treatment and repels her grandma; she clings to noble, platonic Bonny for security but still lusts for her dead Nazi. What to do? Well, for no good reason, they agree to run a useless Quaker dispensary among the hostile Huni Indians--where they go through heavy encounters during a sandstorm. Bonny realizes that Laura loved her Nazi (""Dear God! How could he overcome his revulsion. . .?""). Laura shakes her amnesia when Bonny slaps her (""The rape! I remember the rape!""). She yells at him: ""Fuck off, you goddamn eunuch!"" He surrenders to anger and lust and yells at her: ""You filthy, insane whore!"" And then they both realize that the Hunis are really dangerous (""So they are killing their newborn children?') and barely escape poison gas and crucifixion, fleeing with an Indian infant. Plus: a 100-page epilogue 20 years later that finds Laura a fat, divorced Third-World pediatrician and ""Quaker saint"" still brooding over her guilt--that ""she had writhed in sexual ecstasy while outside her very window prisoners were being tortured and beaten."" One could perhaps forgive the confused fussings with Guilt and Good and Sin here if the story were well told. But neither lead character is appealing or believable, the shifts in mood and scene are awkward, and de Hartog has come up with some of the worst dialogue of the decade ("" 'Look, buster,' she said, puffing, ""don't you start using my past as a coloring book?""). Strong beginning--then straight on down into terminal bathos.

Pub Date: Jan. 9, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row/Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION