It is the stone house that provides much of the material in a family story that perhaps is not so much out of the ordinary but which attains significance because of Mouillot's impressive ability to describe the highly individualistic lives of the two main protagonists, her grandmother and grandfather.
The grandparents survived the Nazi occupation in World War 2.
But, before long, they separated and it is about the outcome of that separation that the author writes with considerable elan.
Not only people but the old stone cottage provide the background for an unusual and highly satisfying memoir.
- Clarke Isaacs
Austen Ivereigh's ''authoritative biography'' is the third book on Pope Francis to cross my path in a year.
It covers very similar ground to Paul Vallely's somewhat rushed but otherwise excellent earlier biography.
Ivereigh's book is 200 pages longer, however, and thus offers a weightier and more detailed view of the man who became the first South American Pope.
Pope Francis continues to enjoy the favour of the media, and in this book the reader can see many reasons why this should be so.
After a long career in his native country he intended to retire.
Being suddenly thrust into the papacy was as much of a shock to him as to the rest of the world.
Ivereigh is a highly regarded journalist, and one of the founders of Catholic Voices, a group formed to improve the Church's representation in the media.
- Mike Crowl
