The Paper Man, by Billy O'Callaghan

A box of letters reveals a tragic past.

Jack Shine works on the docks in the Irish city of Cork. It's 1980 and Jack is forty-one years old. He's helping clear out his uncle Joe's house, which is up for sale. It is the house he was born and raised in. While cleaning up they find a box of letters and news articles. The letters are addressed to his mother, Rebekah, and are from a famous footballer named Matthias Sindelar. Rebekah had fled Vienna in the late 1930s, in serious danger as a young Jewish woman. The letters and articles reveal the essence of a passionate relationship between Rebekah and the Catholic Matthias.

Eager to find out more, Jack travels with his Jewish (and German speaking) father-in-law, Samuel, to Vienna, trying to piece together more pieces of the puzzle. Rebekah had died when Jack was only 10 years old and had never explained this mysterious part of her past.

The Paper Man (the title refers to the on-field agility of Matthias Sindelar as a footballer) is apparently based on real people and events. Irish writer Billy O'Callaghan has fashioned a slow moving yet absorbing story of love, desperate times and the tragic effects of war on everyday people. This is not a perfect love story by any chance. Matthias is portrayed as a bit of a womaniser, and Rebekah's parents are none too happy with their relationship, but O'Callaghan shows how war cut like a scythe through society. Those on the Nazis' hit list had to drop everything and run for their lives. We don't know how Rebekah and Matthias's relationship would have panned out had not war interrupted it.

A poignant war story carefully told.  

The Paper Man, by Billy O'Callaghan. Published by Jonathan Cape. $34.99

OCT23