The Sixth Lamentation by William Brodrick
January 10, 2012 by Bibliofemme
Filed under Book Reviews
(Published by Times Warner)
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Eduard Schwermann is an old man seeking sanctuary at Larkwood Priory in Suffolk. Agnes Aubret is a woman whose life is running out; she has just been diagnosed with terminal motor neuron disease. It’s time, Agnes feels, to tell her granddaughter, Lucy, the secrets she has carried for the past 50 years.
During the 1940s, while living in Occupied Paris, Agnes was a member of a small resistance group called the Round Table that risked their lives to smuggle Jewish children to safety – until they were exposed by a young SS officer named Eduard Schwermann.
Agnes’s story merges with Schwermann’s in this powerful debut novel, which moves seamlessly back-and-forth in time. What Agnes doesn’t know is the personal investment Schwermann had in the Round Table, the silent bargains made by its members, and the true extent of Schwermann’s final treachery.
Exploring the legacies of history and the way time changes memory, The Sixth Lamentation keeps the reader thinking and guessing until its astonishing conclusion. 
