Paris Never Leaves You

 

Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman  368 pages

Ages ago, I read author Ellen Feldman’s “Lucy,” and it was a wonderful read.  I’m sorry to say tht I haven’t read any of her five books since then, but I plan to rectify that soon. In this, her sixth, novel, Feldman deals with a form of PTSD as invoked by the title.  Charlotte can never forget what happened in Paris during the Nazi Occupation. Her daughter, Vivi, was barely a toddler, but the events of those extraordinary times also seem to prey on her.

The novel opens in Paris, in 1944. Charlotte and other Jews are ripping the stars from their clothing.  Paris had been liberated and with it the camps. But the opening scene turns frightful when an angry mob attacks a woman known as a collaborator.

The scene then shifts to New York, 1954 (I love dueling timeline!). Charlotte is a book editor at the prestigious  publishing house of Gibbon & Field. The “Field” is none other than Horace Field, one of Charlotte and Vivi’s sponsors, which allowed them to come to America.

A letter, not the first, has arrived at Charlotte’s desk. She’s on her way to a meeting and slips it into the trash. Readers don’t know who it is from and Charlotte’s apprehension regarding opening it foreshadows the fear she feels that her past is about to come for its revenge.

One of the things that I admired most about this novel was the seemless transition between Charlotte’s life as a bookseller in Occupied Paris to her contemporary circumstances without using chapter breaks.

In Paris, Charlotte is managing a bookstore with ther friend and the store owner, Simeone. Many think they are sisters, but they are not. One afternoon a Nazi officer comes into the bookstore, just browsing. Fear races through Charlotte’s veins, but she manages to stay calm.  That officer’s arrival will have implications in her life forever.

I don’t want to give too much away, and I was surpised that there was no synopsis on the book’s cover. But as Feldman weaves her story, she drops little bombshells ar just the right time to make this reader sit up straighter and stay up way past her bedtime. Even when I thought the book was going to plateau, another little bomb oes off, and I’m up even later. Therefore, “Paris Never Leaves You” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.