Book Reviews

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Firstly I have a confession to make, this is the first of Colin Falconer’s novels that I have read but I can assure you that it will not be the last. I think the sign of a well crafted book is the time from finishing reading to looking the author up and ordering more of their work. In this case I hadn’t even got to the end of the book before I was trawling Amazon looking for more.

The title gives a little away about the story Stigmata or the “Wounds of Christ”. The story follows two lost souls, a knight who finds himself lost in grief following his crusade when he returns to find his wife has died and his son is dying, and his opposite a young woman the daughter of a stone mason who finds herself on the edge of society after developing wounds on her hands and feet.

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Some books should be prescribed reading for all of those who have partners/family who have been to war. Or for that matter, politicians – but that is another story. You do not have to be a sufferer of PTSD or combat stress or know someone who has, to appreciate this book.

It takes a profound degree of honesty and courage to write a book like this; particularly as an officer, and an Australian. The stereotype of macho man does not come much higher than that; and I defy anyone to look at John Cantwell’s face on the front cover and not see the emotional scars wreaked by over thirty years serving his country.

John Cantwell joined the Australian army as a private and rose through the ranks to become Major General. His personal account of those years, commencing with the First Gulf War and his part in it are, both intensely personal and a very realistic account of the madness, confusion and boredom that can be war. He himself admits that part of the problem, as he perceived it, was that he was only at war, on the ground, for a very short time. Therefore, how on earth, compared to other soldiers going out time and time again in merciless heat, in hostile territory, in Afghanistan, Iraq could he be feeling like this?

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