Book Review: Montjoy

Reviewed by Nikolas Mavreas

A gripping historical novel packed with psychological intrigue

Curt Finch’s Montjoy: A Novel in Five Verges, contains a story within a story. The outside narrative is that of a father and academic in tough times; framed inside is a piece of historical fiction taking place among the SS ranks of Nazi Germany.

Owen Schoenberg is a middle-aged Jewish historian who teaches in Britain. While professionally successful, having published a critically acclaimed and award-winning book on the Nazi concentration camps of Mauthausen and Gusen in Austria (where his grandfather was killed), his personal life has taken a tragic turn with the recent death of his son and separation from his wife. 

His son’s image is constantly flashing across his mind, and he is feeling unfulfilled by his teaching and writing. Ella, one of his only friends and an official at the Mauthausen Memorial in Vienna, informs him that some interesting items were unearthed during a digging project at the former site of the barracks used by the SS officers overseeing the camps, including a notebook signed by one Rikard Anton Boecker. 

This notebook tells a story which, if true, could be the first documented instance of vigilantism in Nazi Germany.  The events in the notebook, as reconstructed by our historian protagonist, present the story of a mysterious man and seemingly reluctant Nazi whose mind is haunted by a specter and whose life unravels when he attempts to help Jews escape the Third Reich.

Presented through the conceit of a scientific report by our historian protagonist for the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, this historical story is narrated in the third person and without dialogue. It constitutes the middle and largest chapter, or “verge,” as Finch idiosyncratically calls it. It makes up a large chunk of the book, made up more than two thirds of the book, which can give the impression of some structural unevenness. 

The narrative of the notebook and its author’s purported fate is equal parts exciting action thriller and psychological study. There are brutal scenes with captivating emotion, details that Finch doesn’t shy away from. He successfully evokes the atmosphere of period and place, not least through the employment of German terms which are conveniently translated in the endnotes.

The framing narrative is told through the first person perspective of our protagonist, without any dialogue, written not so much in the polished and considered voice of an autobiography but rather with the spontaneous, recounting technique of a diary entry.

The author is at his best in his treatment of meta-fiction. I loved how the historian deals with the authenticity and historicity of the authorship of the found notebook and the events it describes. Textual criticism is a rare theme for a novel, but Finch handles his themes adroitly. This is a smart book.

Perhaps most important is the psychological theme, which connects the protagonists of the two stories, the historian and his subject, both haunted by their own minds. Montjoy is a compelling psychological exploration of normal people in both normal and extraordinary circumstances.

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