The Last Shot

The long-lost-wartime-father-sought-by-grown-child story is common enough to be its own genre by now, but rarely is it executed with the polish and depth exhibited here. Using a filmic technique of intercutting fast-paced chapters to tell two parallel tales--that of Bertha Sommer and Franz Kern escaping Czechoslovakia for Germany ahead of the victorious Russians in 1945, and that of the son of their illicit love (with his own romantic entanglement) trying to locate his father 45 years later--Hamilton has precision-crafted an absorbing book. Scenes of war-shattered Germany alternate with accounts of its reunification, and there is well-placed irony as several characters repeat ``how exciting reunification was for Germany.'' This novel stands apart from most of its type not only through its careful contrast of the formation and the unraveling of the Eastern bloc, but through Hamilton's ability to create unusually realistic characters. The narrative has definite momentum, and quickens most keenly with the subtle recurrent images that resonate between the two plots and bind them together. In one such use of metaphor, a child with Down's syndrome comes to symbolize the uncontrollable, ever-present mystery of human tragedy. In his debut on these shores (his novel Surrogate City was not published here) Irish writer Hamilton offers a welcome hybrid: a page-turner that doesn't stint on literary ambition. (June)