A Son of the Rock

Hutchinson Heineman, 2026, 364 p including 2 p Author’s Note.

“‘We see the world once only,’ she said. ‘In childhood. The rest is remembering.’” So says Mrs Graveney, the headteacher of Witchelm, the school in which Philip Deval, having recently left the army after service in the Second World War and in the dying days of the Palestine Mandate, is to take up teaching. Farewell to Eden is the novelistic expression of protagonist Deval’s life, which before the war was a kind of aimless drifting through University and a relationship with Alice Western which is to end in tragedy and leave him reticent to expose himself to further possible grief.

At Witchelm he strikes up a companionable friendship with music teacher Frances Darwood, a woman with haunted memories of her own from recent times. In their conversations they eventually come to tell each other about their previous lives. The main body of the book, though, is concerned with Deval’s experiences in Palestine and its ramifications for his later life.

During the exercise of his duties Deval comes upon the aftermath of the bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun and Faulks does not flinch from describing its gruesome detail. There are episodes of cloak and dagger in a kind of colloquy with the militants and a pervading sense of imminent danger. One of Deval’s army colleagues habitually refers to the Jewish activists as Bagels. I suspect – and indeed Faulks makes reference to it in his Author’s Note – any such word used would have been much more offensive.

Deval’s encounters with Arab Palestinians portray them – despite the pre-war Arab revolt – as unprepared for the adversity which would shortly befall them.

In one of his conversations Deval’s company chaplain reflects on the Jewish origins of Christianity. “‘Life would have been easier, certainly,’ said Matthew. ‘If He had come from nowhere. If He’d been untouched by previous gods and tribal wars. If He’d been less … specific. But we can’t question it.’

‘Can’t we?’ said Philip.

‘No. It’s too late.’”

That last sentence may also be a comment on the present situation in those troubled lands. Faulks has here examined the turbulence amid which the state of Israel was founded; the genesis of what is an enduring tragedy.

Pedant’s corner:- “in Hebrew Gethsemane meant ‘oil press’.” (Well, no. It means ‘oil press’ in English. In Hebrew it means Gethsemane,) “the lowest point on the earth’s crust” (in the text this is the Dead Sea, but there are many lower points in the earth’s crust than that. The Dead Sea is merely the lowest point on a continental surface.)