Lana's War

Lana’s War by Anita Abriel 336 pages

Paris 1943. Lana Hartman, formerly Lana Antanova, is hurrying to visit her musician husband, Frederic, at the convent where he teaches. She cannot wait to share that they are to have a baby! She slows when she sees a German truck parked in front.

 Unsure of what is happening, she peeks in the window just in time to witness Frederic trying to hide Jewish children. The Gestapo is relentless and soon discovers another girl hiding in the piano. Lana is watching when the Gestapo shoots Frederic in cold blood.  She stumbles to their apartment where she loses the baby.

Through her ties to the convent, Lana is introduced to Henri, a member of the French Resistance. He has come to tell her the name of the Nazi-bastard who killed Frederic and, ultimately, the baby and recruit her.

 Henri is interested in more than helping Lana getting revenge. Lana is the daughter of a Russian countess. She is beautiful. She is young. She is royalty. She would be an asset with their work on the French Riviera.

I’ve read a lot of novels about the French Resistance, but none of those novels ever took place in one of the most beautiful spots in the world. It was a nice change of pace, and the landscape becomes one of the characters.

Lana throws some of her mother’s evening gowns in a bag and boards a train. Her cover is that she is the live-in mistress of wealthy Swiss industrialist and fellow fighter. Lana’s job is to use her beauty and elegance to gain information from the Nazis who were enjoying some time off from the war that would help them to help Jews escape. Lana and Guy are the perfect couple and attend parties most evenings.

I enjoyed Abriel’s novel as it was a little different. The tension was adequate, but not high. What really forced me to give Lana’s War 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world is the ending.  It was so predictable. The novel would have been much more realistic without it.

Code Name Helene

 Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon   464 pages

 Over the years, I have a read a lot of novels about the French Resistance during World War Two, but I feel I can honestly say this is the first time I have ever felt as if I was embedded in a group of fighters.

This biographical fictional piece centers on Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, an Australian freelance journalist living and working in Paris. The book covers the time period of 1936-1944. Right before the Germans march into the City of Lights, Nancy and Henri, a wealthy industrialist,  fall in love and marry. Then Nancy gets involved in helping fight the Nazis.

What truly amazed about this novel is the complexities of the timelines (I counted six!) that tell Nancy’s story that takes place from 1936 through 1944, and in some ways, it is written backwards. I cannot image how author Ariel Lawhon managed to keep it all straight.

I mentioned six timelines: Nancy and her four code names (Madame Andree, Lucienne Carlier, 

Helene and The White Mouse) plus Henri. There is so much detail and yet it seems like there is hardly any; each element enriches the story. I never felt lost or confused about who was who and what was happening. Like the war itself,  Nancy’s story is too grand to have only one aspect of it spoken about or recorded.  The research Lawhon must have done probably lasted years!

I could not put this book down.  “Code Name Helene” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Winemaker's Wife

 

The Winemaker’s Wife  by Kristen Harmel   400 pages

Part of this story takes place in the Champagne Region of France. It’s set in 1940 and begins just before the Nazis invade France. Then the timeline and the location shifts to 2019 and New York. Dualing timelimes…one of my favorite plot structures!

In the 1940s sections, the Maison Chauveau is one of, if not the, best Champagne houses in all of France. The house is owned and operated by Michel Chauveau and his new wife, Ines. Also heavily featured in these sections are the chef de cave, Theo, and his wife, Celine. No matter the danger they are in from the aiding enemy army, there is a bigger threat to the house’s stability. Celine is half-Jewish. Word of the real purposes of the “work camps” is just beginning to be discussed. Michel puts them all in danger, but especially Celine, when he begins running munitions for the French Resistance. Michel is so worried, and so preoccupied,  that he begins to ignore Ines, hoping her ignorance of his activities will keep her safe. Then there is the attraction Michel feels for Celine that puts a monkey wrench in the whole situation.

In New York, Liv has lost everything. Right before she and her husband, Eric, had started their third round of in vitro fertilization, he convinced Liv to quit her job, to stay home and focus on getting pregnant. Little did Liz know that it got her out of the way while he had an affair. Now divorced, Liv is depressed. There’s a knock at her door

Her 99-year-old grandmother has arrived from France to get her. Liv isn’t interested in returning to Paris. But Grandma Edith is a tough cookie, still, and won’t take no for an answer. Plus she has an agenda that will shock Liv, and give her the purpose she needs to move on with her life.

I enjoyed “The Winemaker’s Wife.” Author Kristen Harmel does an excellent job in keeping the characters’s secrets until the end. There was one question that I had that wasn’t answered and that is, “Did the Nazis find the hidden room in the underground cave system where Michel and Theo his their best champagnes?” Otherwise, the story is a fascinating look at the cave system where Maison Chauveau hid their products, the small things that were done as part of the Resistance, and family secrets. 

The Author’s Notes provided insight into the book’s creation, which was also fascinating.  “The Winemaker’s Wife ” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Mistress of the Ritz

Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin     384 pages

 I love all things Melanie. Ever since I first picked up “The Aviator’s Wife,” and was swept away, I’ve been a huge fan. I’ve devoured all her other works. The only thing bad about a new Melanie Benjamin book is that when I’m finished, I have to wait until she completes her next one. Such is the woe of a reader.

When I was able to get my hands on an Advanced Reader’s Copy of her latest, “Mistress of the Ritz,” I truly had no idea of what it would be about…and didn’t care. From the cover, I gleaned that it was set in 1940, and of course, the story takes place in Paris. The mere mention the Ritz evokes imagination pictures of elegance and opulence.

I had no idea that the central characters of Benjamin’s were based on a real-life couple until I read the author’s notes at the end.

A Frenchman, Claude Auzello, is the Ritz’s director. He lives on-site with his American-born wife, Blanche. Claude oversees all the details of running the most glamorous hotel in Paris, and Blanche mingles with the guests. They seem happy, but behind closed doors, the Auzello’s marriage is falling apart.

Then the Nazi’s marched into Paris. The fear that gripped Paris was palpable and jumped off the page. The Auzello’s, like the rest of the Parisians, did what they had to do, whether it was serving the Germans with a smile or tryin to stay out of their way.

The story isn’t a page-turner nor is it slow and plodding. It’s a look at life among the Germans in the occupied city. Readers get to truly know the characters, their fears, their personalities, what makes them tick.

Both Claude and Blanche are recruited by the Resistance, and they gladly, although unknown to each other, serve their country. There were some tense moments and awkward situations, but I always felt that they would overcome any obstacle. Until there was only less than one-third of the book left that is. Then, BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Let’s just say all hell breaks loose, and the book has an ending that I never, ever saw coming. Yeah! As I turned the last page, I almost fainted, I as was unconsciously holding my breath.

I highly recommend “Mistress of the Ritz,” and it receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Lost Girls of Paris

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff   384 pages

From the author of “The Orphan Train” and several other novels come another story set in the World War II era, Pam Jenoff.  She takes another small, forgotten true story from the war and creates a real-page turner that often left me breathless.

The story opens in 1946, Manhattan. Cutting through Grand Central Station on morning, Grace Healey stumbles upon an abandoned suitcase, battered and worn.  No one seems to be around to claim it. Grace takes it upon herself to open it, looking for some sort of identification. There is a word, Trigg, scrawled on the side. In addition to the normal items that would be contained in a suitcase, Grace finds the photographs of twelve young women who appear to be in their very late teens or early twenties. The only identifying marks on the photos are first names, which Grace assumes are the women’s names.

Then the story jumps back to London, 1943. Eleanor is heading up a division of Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British operations organization designed to conduct espionage, sabotage and aid the local resistance movements in occupied Europe.

Eleanor’s job is to recruit and train young women to go undercover in France to transmit radio correspondence between London and France, particularly in the outskirts of Paris. Eleanor has selected twelve young women for the job.

The story weaves back and forth between Grace, determined to learn who the women are and what happened to them, and Eleanor has the group’s leader, and one of the girls, Marie.

I was disappointed that readers only get to know Marie intimately and another operative, Josie, superficially. Some of the other girls’ names were mentioned, but not all. I understand that it would have been too confusing, and too lengthy, to try to write about all twelve. Still, it was a wonderful read, compelling, and each story reached toward its climax, I found myself gasping at twists I didn’t expect. I want to give  “The Lost Girls of Paris” 5 out of 5 stars, but the lack of information about the other ten girls forces me to give this novel 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

De Gaulle

De Gaulle by Francois Mauriac, translated by Richard Howard, 229 pages

Nobel prize winning novelist Francois Mauriac's study of the career of Charles De Gaulle is less a standard biography than an extended celebration of the man who more than any other defined France in the twentieth century.  Published in 1964, twenty years after the General led the liberation of Paris, six years after his inauguration of the Fifth Republic, and six years before his death, the book is crammed full of extended selections from its subject's public pronouncements, giving De Gaulle ample opportunity to explain De Gaulle.  

Although as an author Mauriac was known for creating characters with profound psychological and spiritual depths, he deliberately avoids discussing or speculating on De Gaulle's private life or inner motivations, barely even referencing his life before the War.  Instead Mauriac presents a portrait which seems to be less concerned with the actual man than what he symbolized for a generation who were introduced to him as a voice on the radio in their darkest hour, broadcasting defiance to the German occupiers and their Vichy collaborators.  For Mauriac, De Gaulle is indissolubly connected to France by a sacred bond deeper than democracy, a concept whose echoes disturbingly resemble the rhetoric of Mussolini and Lenin, Hitler and Stalin, but Mauriac's evaluation of De Gaulle as resolutely opposed to every form of dictatorship has been vindicated by history, as have many of De Gaulle's own predictions concerning the future of Europe and the world.  Ultimately, the source of Mauriac's attachment lies in his understanding of his hero as primarily a spiritual and moral rather than political leader.

The Nightingale

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah   440 pages

In love we find out who we want to be.

In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

These are the first words on the dust jacket and truly sum up this marvelous novel.

Vianne Mauric lives in a quiet village outside Paris with her husband, Antoine, and their eight-year-old daughter. Antoine has been called into service, but no one in the village believes that the Nazis will invade. Well, we know how that turned out.

Vianne’s younger sister, Isabelle, is eighteen, rebellious and searching for passion. When the young man she falls head-over-heels in love with betrays her, she vows to take an active part in freeing France from the Nazis.

In this incredible story, readers have a chance to witness “an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women's war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.”

Author Hannah made me feel like I was in France, both trying to eek out a living as Vianne was doing or joining the Resistance with Isabelle. I had trouble putting this book and was sad when it ended.

I give The Nightingale six out of five stars. Of the 65 books I’ve read this year, The Nightingale is one of the best.

All the LIght We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr   531 pages

All the Light We Cannot See has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 37 week (as of this writing)   and was a 2014 National Book award finalist. The book jacket states it Doerr spent a decade writing this story. I can see why, it’s filled with historical details.

Marie-Laure has been blind since she was six years old.  Now fourteen, she and her father live in Paris on the eve of WWII.

Werner has a gift with radios. His “knack” leads the orphan boy to be admitted into a brutal branch Hitler’s Youth Army.

The story weaves back and forth between Marie-Laure and Werner, each chapter no more than two to three pages.

All the Light We Cannot See in not another WWII story. It’s not plot-driven, but character driven, except the small scenario of a stolen gem.

Marie-Laure and her father are forced to flee Paris as the Nazi’s march in. They escape to Saint-Malo to the home of her great-uncle and his eccentric housekeeper.

As Werner becomes a soldier and his expertise with radios and tracking signals becomes well-known, he isn’t sent to the front lines. He’s sent into France to help track the Resistance.

Eventually, and inevitably, Marie-Laure and Werner’s paths cross in Saint-Malo. The intertwined tales recreates in harrowing detail the deprivation for civilians in Nazi-occupied  France and the brutality of Hitler’s soldiers.

It almost seems that All the Light We Cannot See would be a hard book to read. However, given the magic of Doerr’s writing, it becomes a book of hope.

Nightingale

Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
440 Pages

The tale of two sisters Vianne and Isabelle during WW II in France.  When war breaks out, Vianne's husband Antoine travels to the front leaving Vianne and her daughter Sophie in their small village.  Her sister Isabelle is living with her father in Paris and as the Germans invade, is forced to leave Paris and live with her sister.  Each sister must find their own way to survive the war and fight on their own terms.

A well rounded novel about a women in wartime.  Hannah presents character-driven narratives in a novel full of emotion.