Zola's realism style of writing made this difficult for me initially. In particular the realistic dialogue which dragged on and meant the novel kept gZola's realism style of writing made this difficult for me initially. In particular the realistic dialogue which dragged on and meant the novel kept going out of focus. But once the narrative focused on Nana herself I was enthralled. The description of her life as an actress at the theatre was wonderful in all its evocative detail. Zola does a great job of showing how limited the choices were for independently-spirited women at this time in history. Nana soon becomes one of the most influential celebrities of Paris and attracts all the most powerful men. It's now she takes revenge on the patriarchal power structures that damaged the innocence of her childhood dreams....more
A group of political emigres have taken refuge in Paris in 1938 and set up a clandestine newspaper opposing fascism. When the editor is murdered it woA group of political emigres have taken refuge in Paris in 1938 and set up a clandestine newspaper opposing fascism. When the editor is murdered it would appear OVRA, Mussolini's version of the Gestapo, is behind the killing. Carlo Weisz, a journalist for Reuters, is in Spain when the murder takes place reporting on the Spanish civil war. He now becomes editor. His work with Reuters takes him to Berlin where he falls in love with a high connected German woman who is involved in opposing the Nazis.
The Foreign Correspondent is very well researched and the period detail is good but, though it was an enjoyable read, for me it often lacked the tightness of plot and suspense to keep me fully engaged. ...more
An earlier taste of Hilary Mantel's dark fascination with individuals who lose their heads. This isn't quite as accomplished the Cromwell novels. The An earlier taste of Hilary Mantel's dark fascination with individuals who lose their heads. This isn't quite as accomplished the Cromwell novels. The focus is more fidgety. It's an aspect of writing I suspect she learned a lot about while writing this novel with its huge historical canvas. The story of the French revolution is here told through two of its chief protagonists, Danton, Robespierre and a lesser known friend of theirs called Camille Desmoulins. And it's Camille and his wife Lucile who become the stars of the show. Hilary lavishes as much love on Camille and Lucile as she would later do with Cromwell. And as was the case with Cromwell she uses Camille's enemies to crank up the dramatic tension. The baddie in this book is Antoine Saint-Just, known to history as the "angel of death" and boy does Mantel get you hating him!
A Place of Greater Safety is an utterly compelling, exciting and moving way of immersing yourself in the events and mechanics of the French Revolution. And underneath all the high drama it's also a story of betrayed friendship, personified here by Robespierre....more
Lost Illusions tells the story of a good looking young man who lusts after fame in Paris and as a result brings his supportive good-natured provincialLost Illusions tells the story of a good looking young man who lusts after fame in Paris and as a result brings his supportive good-natured provincial family to bankruptcy. It's a rather long-winded novel. In common with many 19th century novelists Balzac does like to give elaborate descriptions of everything he sees. Thus every room is presented to us in meticulous detail - wonderful if you want to research interior design in 19th century France; on the tedious side otherwise; every character's physiognomy is put under a microscope even though they may never appear again. It's a facet of the novel that has been greatly improved over the decades. He's also rather over-keen on aphorisms. But on the whole this was a brilliantly moving novel which very convincingly created an entire world in a particular moment of history. In an ideal world though it would be clipped of a couple hundred of its very many pages....more
This is a novel about a working class family in Paris and especially a young woman called Gervaise who is left by her husband. It's an incredibly detaThis is a novel about a working class family in Paris and especially a young woman called Gervaise who is left by her husband. It's an incredibly detailed novel, too much so for my liking. Every room receives a full inventory of its visuals, every character's physiognomy is elaborated, every task a character performs is described in all its minute detail. The other problem I had was all the characters became more and more unlikeable and it began to be hard to feel sympathy. Zola writes brilliantly and very convincingly about a working class environment but ultimately this never quite engaged me as a novel. ...more
Evie and Jack is a love story set during WW2. Jack is a Spitfire pilot; Evie a WAAF radio operator who later in the war becomes a SOE agent who is parEvie and Jack is a love story set during WW2. Jack is a Spitfire pilot; Evie a WAAF radio operator who later in the war becomes a SOE agent who is parachuted into France. The novel adopts initially what is a slightly confusing chronology, beginning with Evie's parachute jump into France. The circuit she is to join has been infiltrated by the Germans and there's a traitor in her midst. We then flash back to the Battle of Britain and Jack's Spitfire squadron. This was my favourite part of the novel. The air combat is brilliantly described as is the camaraderie between the pilots. The Evie narrative for me was less compelling though the search for information about her plight, involving trips to prisons and concentration camps, at the end of the war was moving. I didn't enjoy this as much as his The Way Back to Florence which is more beautifully and lyrically written compared to the minimalist prose of this but on the whole an edifying read....more
Amazing book by an amazing man. Jacques Lusseyran went blind as a young boy after a seemingly innocuous accident at school. I’ve never before read theAmazing book by an amazing man. Jacques Lusseyran went blind as a young boy after a seemingly innocuous accident at school. I’ve never before read the memoir of a blind person and his account of how he adapted to his new world and what it entailed was a deeply fascinating education. Even had the Nazis not arrived in Paris where he lived this would have been a compelling memoir. But the fact he then forms one of the first resistance movements cranks up the tension tenfold. The mind boggles at what he achieves. One of the most moving features of this book is his depiction of his boyhood friends - Jean, Georges and Francois. All three follow him into the resistance. We of course know he survives the war but we don’t know if his friends do and he makes us so fond of them that we’re praying they too make it. This looks unlikely when the entire organisation is arrested and eventually transported to Buchenwald concentration camp. There was a traitor in their midst.
It’s not unlikely Anthony Doerr got his idea for All the Light We Cannot See from this book. In fact it’s the first book he mentions on his acknowledgements page.
Recommended to all and sundry and massive thanks to Jaline and her fabulous review for drawing my attention to it....more
A well researched, well organised, philosophical overview of France under Nazi occupation. The author depicts a humiliated, abject nation where collabA well researched, well organised, philosophical overview of France under Nazi occupation. The author depicts a humiliated, abject nation where collaboration and opportunism are much more common than resistance. How the Nazis found a lot of extreme right wing anti-semitic feeling in France to exploit and thus were often able to let the willing French do their dirty work for them. It's interesting how novels mostly depict the French as heroic freedom fighters which seems a case of ignoring the many and singling out the few. When the tide of the war turned and it became clear Hitler was going to lose it's true there was more opposition but this book depicts a country at war with itself, a country going through an identity crisis and finally a country that emerges from the war with far more shame than glory. The Vichy government for example has to stand up as one of the most pathetic cynical governments in the history of Europe. Petain, a vain and virtually senile old man, who has lost all contact with reality - ring any bells? It's extraordinary how a lot of men rise to power. The world is full of intelligent gifted clear sighted individuals and yet we end up with nut jobs like Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump, Hitler, Mussolini and Petain governing us. Make sense of that if you can!...more
Extensively researched and captivating portrait of Paris during the war. The author does a fabulous job of providing a running commentary on both the Extensively researched and captivating portrait of Paris during the war. The author does a fabulous job of providing a running commentary on both the politics and everyday life. It’s the detail of everyday life, often recounted through excerpts of the diaries of individuals, that creates such an intimate and pressing portrait of what the people of Paris went through.
It’s interesting that fiction often chooses to represent France through the resistance – The Nightingale, All the Light, The Baker’s Secret – because, on the evidence of this book, there’s very little resistance until the tide of the war turns against the Germans. Instead there’s mostly abject resignation but also a lot of tawdry and craven opportunism. At times France appears like Germany’s little brother desperately trying to ingratiate himself with his more powerful sibling. Never is this more apparent and reprehensible when, without any pressure from the Nazis, the French government introduce the race laws and begin persecuting the Jews. It’s also the French police who do the Gestapo’s work for them. Only when the Normandy landings have taken place do they change their tune and begin making life difficult for the Germans. Again the opportunism theme raises its head. Of course there were also small groups of brave individuals who fought the Nazis but these have had far more publicity than the more numerous individuals who not only aped Nazi cruelty but sometimes exceeded it.
The only faint reservation I had was that the author didn’t once mention the work of SOE. Perhaps though that has already been well documented. It's sometimes though forgotten that the French resistance was only possible thanks to the bravery of a handful of allied agents. All the necessary weapons and money came from London.
I have to say this book isn’t only riveting because of the war. I realised such an intimate portrait of any major city during any decade would be fascinating....more
I’m always a bit suspicious of novels that on the one hand deal with a historic event but on the other invent a location to set the story in. You someI’m always a bit suspicious of novels that on the one hand deal with a historic event but on the other invent a location to set the story in. You sometimes feel this is an easy way of both bypassing research and taking poetic licence to an excessive extreme. For example I’m not sure All the Light We Cannot See would have been quite so bewitching had it been set not in Saint-Malo but instead in a made up town. The backdrop of Saint-Malo gave Doerr’s book a solid foundation against which he could weave all his magic.
The Baker’s Secret is set in a fictitious town in northern France. Its central character is Emma, the town baker. She is given the task of baking bread for local German officers. Except instead of baking the required dozen loaves she adds sawdust to the flour and bakes fourteen. It’s a nice idea and probably very accurate regarding how tiny most people’s contribution to the resistance was. However, this is a strange floating novel with no real central plot line. We’re introduced to a variety of the town’s residents, all of whom are whimsical rather than recognisably true to life. This creates the atmosphere of a fable, as does the chatty voice of the narrative, but this novel never engaged me emotionally. It was a bit like a cartoon version of life in France during WW2....more
While reading this I couldn’t help wishing members of my own family had written a memoir. Imagine how wonderful it would be if we inherited written acWhile reading this I couldn’t help wishing members of my own family had written a memoir. Imagine how wonderful it would be if we inherited written accounts of the lives of our ancestors. And not just those who lived through big historical events. Probably all of us should write some kind of memoir. As a gift to those who come after us. One reason we don’t is probably the notion that our lives aren’t interesting enough. But it wasn’t just the war that made this such a terrific read. Often it was the detail of daily life in a working class French family. The bullying the author suffers at school, his way of dealing with it, his first kiss, his love/hate relationship with his older brother, his first job as an apprentice to a barber.
The first thing to praise is how exceptionally well Roger de Anfrasio writes. Often his descriptive passages are worthy of a first rate novelist – the bombing raid on the goods yard near his house was so vividly and eloquently described that it was like watching the event on a big screen. Same goes for when he sneaks into the depot yard guarded by German soldiers to steal some food.
Roger is ten years old when the war begins and is a bit of a jack the lad. Always getting into trouble. But he’s big hearted too and one of the most moving scenes in the book is when the Gestapo arrive in his class to arrest his Jewish friend, Joeh. It’s a beautiful testament to friendship that he brings back to life poor Joeh in this book. Another scene I loved was at the end of the war when the women who have profited from the Nazis are brought to the barber shop to be shaved by him. Obviously not a job he wants but is forced to carry out.
It’s a bit sad that I’m only the second person to review this. I can’t help thinking of novels about WW2 France like All the Light We Cannot Seeand The Nightingale which have probably made their authors millionaires while a fabulous account of those times by someone who lived through them goes virtually unrecognised. I’m not denigrating those authors because we all know it takes a great deal of skill to write a compelling novel but I find it a bit sad that you’re more likely to find an important testament to those times like this in a charity shop than in a high street bookstore....more
Another amazing woman. Nancy Wake was an Australian who married a wealthy French businessman and lived in Marseilles when the war broke out. ImmediateAnother amazing woman. Nancy Wake was an Australian who married a wealthy French businessman and lived in Marseilles when the war broke out. Immediately she got involved in the Resistance, almost recklessly you might say. Soon the Gestapo were onto her and she had to escape to England where she was trained as an SOE agent and flown back into France. Eventually she was leading 3,000 maquis in the fight against the Nazis.
This though is a strange biography, almost flippant and anecdotal in tone. Apparently the author spent lots of time with the self-effacing and reticent Nancy and was clearly very charmed by her which perhaps meant he went a bit over the top in singing her praises, to the point where she almost becomes a comic book gun-ho action heroine. The second half of the book especially is rife with anecdotes about her laissez-faire heroics but often rather thin on detail. Though this was a very enjoyable read I’d have preferred to read a more dispassionate and thoroughly researched biography. Sometimes exaggeration has the opposite effect of what's intended and by all accounts there was no need whatsoever to exaggerate Nancy Wade's courage, just as there was no need to do the same with Violette Szabo which the film of her life did when it has her mowing down an entire division of German soldiers when, in reality, she shot at most one. ...more
There’s a great deal of mystery and controversy and even conspiracy theories surrounding the collapse of the SOE Prosper network in the late summer ofThere’s a great deal of mystery and controversy and even conspiracy theories surrounding the collapse of the SOE Prosper network in the late summer of 1943. Prosper was the field name of the British agent Francis Suttill whose task it was to organise the French resistance before the Allied invasion. He was captured by the Gestapo and, though we know it was a British wireless operator called Gilbert Norman who first collaborated with the Nazis, leading to hundreds of arrests, there are also some who maintain Suttill too provided names and addresses which led to deaths. This is the attempt of Suttill’s son to set the record straight.
The conspiracy theory has it that the British secret service deliberately made it easy for the Gestapo to catch SOE agents as part of a major top secret ruse to trick the Germans into believing D-Day was going to happen in late September 1943. One reason for this was to lure the Wehrmacht away from the Russian front as Churchill was under increasing pressure from Stalin to provide more substantial help. We now know this ruse was attempted. It was named Operation Cockade. What we don’t know is whether Britain deliberately allowed the Gestapo to capture British wireless sets and operate them in an elaborate game of double bluff. If the British secretly knew their own wireless sets were being operated by the Gestapo they could send out all kind of phoney information they wanted the Germans to believe.
My interest in this story centred not on Suttill but on the courageous female agents I have been reading about, Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo. I wanted to know to what extent they might have been pawns in a much more complex and darker spy game of which they had no knowledge. Unfortunately this book only mentions the conspiracy theory to summarily dismiss it. The author’s belief is simply that the Gestapo were good at their job. The big problem here is how easy the British made it for the Gestapo to be good at their job. When British wireless operators held by the Gestapo and forced to communicate with London omitted security codes London ignored the warnings and when they were warned a man called Henri Dericourt, the SOE air movement officer, was working for the Gestapo they ignored this information too. (One theory is he was also working for MI6 as a triple agent.) Further, at Dericourt’s trial after the war a top British intelligence officer gave evidence on his behalf and saved him from the noose. This same intelligence officer was a friend of Dericourt before the war and a friend also of a top ranking officer in the Paris Gestapo. The author dismisses this connection as a “claim” but his dismissal is nothing but a claim too so we’re none the wiser.
The book itself. It announces itself as “the true story of Major Suttill and the Prosper network”. However, this statement rather stretches the truth. Like other books on the subject it’s based largely on supposition. Key questions are either shirked or answered with hearsay evidence. The truth is, we’ll probably never know the truth. For example, the author is unable to discover how exactly the Gestapo caught his father, a key piece of information for unravelling all the mystery. I think this would have made a much better documentary than it does a book. There’s too much information which quite frankly isn’t of any interest to the common reader. Almost half the book is dedicated to visiting and cataloguing fields where parachute drops were organised by Suttill. It shows Suttill did a lot of good and dangerous work but the fact that almost everything dropped ended up in Nazi hands rather tarnishes this achievement. Ultimately the circuit achieved very little. The arms and supplies dropped into France were nearly all appropriated by the Germans, never used by the French. A lot of courageous French people were betrayed and lost their lives without firing a shot in anger. If the Prospect circuit wasn’t set up as a ruse to trick the Germans it was largely an impotent shambles. Security, it would appear, was virtually non-existent. That one man, Gilbert Norman, a timid man clearly ill-equipped to be doing such dangerous work, was able to supply the Gestapo with names of individuals and addresses all over France points to a laissez-faire attitude towards confidentiality, the key to any spy network. What is interesting is that two of the most effective SOE circuits which actually played a major part in impeding the Germans on D-Day were run by women, Pearl Witherington and Nancy Wake. You’d have to say they were better at their jobs than the men. You’d also have to say Noor comes out of this story a whole lot better than virtually all her male wireless operator counterparts, especially Gilbert Norman. Unlike him she gave nothing away to the Gestapo, despite the fact that at some point she must have been told London was stupidly assisting the Gestapo in tracking her down.
Essentially I was left with the impression, not for the first time, that Suttill was a brave and essentially noble man who was badly let down by his organisation and a few individuals. It’s even hard to dismiss Norman as a coward, faced as he was with the gruesome tortures the Gestapo implemented. Both men were to be killed by the Germans.
I’m still convinced someone should make a film about Noor and Suttill and Norman. There’s so much riveting material here. If the subject interests you I would recommend A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII. rather than this as it's much more reader friendly and infinitely more riveting....more
Someone should make a film of Noor Inayat Khan’s life. I can’t understand why they haven’t already.
Noor was born a short distance from the Kremlin toSomeone should make a film of Noor Inayat Khan’s life. I can’t understand why they haven’t already.
Noor was born a short distance from the Kremlin to an American mother and an Indian Sufi father, himself of royal blood. The family later moved to Paris. Noor became the author of children’s books in her early twenties and was quite successful - Twenty Jataka Tales. When the Nazis arrived the family fled to London. Noor joined SOE and trained to be a wireless operator. She was flown into France at a time (the summer of 1943) when the Gestapo had infiltrated the circuit she was to join. It was a man now known to have been working for the Gestapo who she liaised with in Paris. Basically within a month the Gestapo had arrested virtually an entire network of British, Canadian and French agents and French resistant fighters. They were using captured British wireless sets to send messages to London, organising drops of arms and agents which they would immediately intercept, establishing safe houses which were traps. Noor somehow evaded capture and was now the only wireless operator in contact with London still at large in Paris. Virtually all the resources of the Gestapo are now focused on capturing her. Every time she transmits she runs the risk of the detector vans picking up her location. She has to carry her wireless set from one house to another in Paris where there are Gestapo spot checks everywhere. She’s eventually betrayed by a French woman who is jealous of her and wants the reward.
If you want an example of how huge a part luck played in determining whether a person lived or died in the war there’s a very cruel one here. One night Noor manages to escape from the Gestapo prison. She’s on the roof and is about to jump down onto a neighbouring roof when there’s an air raid. She knows the guards always check all prisoners are in their cells whenever there’s an air raid. She manages to climb down onto a balcony of the neighbouring building and enter an apartment. Unfortunately her absence has been noted and the Gestapo have surrounded the area. She is caught as she tries to leave the front door of the building, which in all probability wouldn’t have happened had there been no air raid that night.
After this she is sent to a prison in Germany where she is permanently chained in solitary confinement. Eventually she will be taken to Dachau.
Violette Szabo was probably the most glamorous of the British SOE agents sent to France. She was also probably the most headstrong. Her young husband Violette Szabo was probably the most glamorous of the British SOE agents sent to France. She was also probably the most headstrong. Her young husband had been killed in North Africa and it was her stated intent “to kill Germans”. She was also rare among female agents in having a young daughter. Some may know there is an old British Film, Carve her Name with Pride, based on Violette’s life. One thing this biography does is reveal how many liberties the film took with the truth. Strange because Violette was clearly an immensely courageous young woman and there was no need to exaggerate her heroics or invent a fictitious love story. The most far-fetched scene in the film is when she machine guns about twenty German soldiers pursuing her. The truth is, an angry impulsive act on her part may well have been what led to her capture. After the war one or two of her captors at the Gestapo HQ in Paris testified to her bravery and many of her fellow prisoners spoke of her indomitable spirit. She was executed at Ravensbruk concentration camp towards the end of the war after having been worked almost to death with three other female British agents.
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