McKenzie’s debut novel is not so much about the historical chapel that stands today in Orkney, Scotland, as it is about the fate of childhood sweethearts, Emilio and Rosa, who are separated and thrust into the turmoil of the Second World War.
The Chapel At The Edge Of The World
Kirsten McKenzie
John Murray
384 pages
Rs375
War makes for an ugly backdrop to a love story, and all but blights the romance in The Chapel At The Edge Of The World. McKenzie’s debut novel is not so much about the historical chapel that stands today in Orkney, Scotland, as it is about the fate of childhood sweethearts, Emilio and Rosa, who are separated and thrust into the turmoil of the Second World War.
She strives to delve into the workings of the patient heart, and uncover whether young love is a country one can return to.
Emilio, though more at ease with a paintbrush than a gun, is conscripted by the Fascist army. He is soon made a prisoner of war (POW), and sent to Orkney where he remains until the war grinds to an end.
Meanwhile Rosa witnesses their border village in Northern Italy getting overrun by Jew-hunting Nazis. Ironically, it is the girl left behind who sees more of the action when Rosa finds herself drawn dangerously into the resistance movement, and to its charismatic member, another childhood friend, Pietro.
McKenzie communicates Rosa’s uncertainties as she drifts away from the dream of a happy reunion with her lover. “Well, I was so young, you see, at the start of the war, only sixteen. Emilio was much older, so that while I had turned from girl to a young woman in those years, he had become only the same man, a few years older.”
Another theme is the isolated wretchedness of the POWs, stuck in the miserably grey Orkney camp facing hard work on another meal of boiled turnips.
McKenzie has picked up a gem in the dark histories of the world wars by choosing to tell the story of the extraordinary chapel that was created by Italian POWS from two Nissen huts and assorted salvaged junk.
But it lacks sparkle, and animation, the account of the chapel surrounded by drabness. Even the stories of Rosa and Emilio are cheerless, their love surviving difficult tests but seeming a flat unremarkable thing. McKenzie shows us the edge of the world but doesn’t marvel at the view.
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