Marcel's Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man's Fate

I was drawn to Marcel's Letters for their central feature: letters from a gentleman by the name of Marcel written from Berlin at the height of World War II and mailed to France. An avid reader of WWII histories, and particularly those with a connection to France, I thought this would be right up my alley. I couldn't have been more wrong.

For starters, the letters themselves are a scant handful covering a few months' time. They're interesting, sure, but don't form the bulwark I had expected. More problematic for me was the overbearing presence of author Carolyn Porter, and all her various neuroses. Even having read the book, I cannot understand how or why this woman became obsessed with uncovering the story behind these letters, nor how, even upon ultimately uncovering what happened to Marcel she still could not let go of the questions around how the letters ultimately made their way to her. (Or, more specifically, to a flea market in France where they were purchased by the owners of antiques stores in the U.S., where she ultimately purchased them.) Her (fairly vicious) comments in the afterward in regards to a woman who may or may not have other letters added a level of acidity to otherwise run-of-the-mill annoying.

The full backstory is that Porter purchased the letters because she was drawn to the handwriting and wanted to use it to design a font. Great. The font, which she ultimately named for Marcel, could also be called classical French, so typically traditional was his handwriting. I will grant that no such font existed, and I might have been more interested in the process involved in designing a font, if the process, in this case, were not rife with commentary on everything Porter did not know about World War II and tears, tears, tears. Everything gets to her. The project - not the font, but the search for the man - consumes her life. Her coping skills seem to be minimal.

The unexpected star of the book is Aaron, Porter's husband, who maintains a sense of humor, calm, and equanimity throughout. The glimpses the handful of letters do offer into life in Germany during WWII are interesting, but in hindsight it would have been more enjoyable for me to read only the letters.

Two stars.

Last Christmas in Paris

Last Christmas in Paris is a Hazel Gaynor-Heather Webb historical novel written in the form of a collection of letters. In the few pages of narrative that open the book, one learns that Thomas Harding is an old man, and a dying one, but one determined to spend his last Christmas in Paris. It is 1969. Thomas takes with him a stack of letters from the first world war, which he intends to read in their entirety in Paris.

The correspondence consists largely, though not exclusively, between him and his best friend's sister, Evie Elliott. With the exception of a handful of narrative pages between each year (1914, 1915, and so on), the entire book takes the form of these letters, with the sporadic narrative filling in the gaps and allowing the reader to guess what secrets might be revealed in the course of the correspondence.

It's hard to know why this book struck me as so mediocre. Partly, the style (letter after letter after letter) wore on me. At times the writing was repetitive. What got to me most was how formulaic it felt. This is a narrative that's been mined time and again (especially in the craze for all things British Great War spawned by Downton Abbey), such that even the "twists" felt predictable. In other words:
Meh.

Meh plot, meh characters, meh writing. Or, as I evidently summed up a previous Hazel Gaynor read: this isn't a bad book. It's just not a great one, and there are too many of those for me to recommend this one wholeheartedly.

This was the second Gaynor and Webb book I've read recently (and the fourth Gaynor book I've read in the past several years). Interestingly, although the author names were familiar, I didn't initially realize that, as the two are so different. Although not perfect, I preferred Meet Me in Monaco, but can see that that period and location could easily influence a reader's preference for one over the other.

Three stars.

Meet Me in Monaco: A Novel of Grace Kelly's Royal Wedding

Meet Me in Monaco is a fluffy read, good for airplanes and beaches and those last few minutes before bed. Co-authors Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb have created their story by imagining the life and times of the (fictional) struggling perfumer whose family workshop was saved when Grace Kelly commissioned her to create a singular scent for her wedding to Prince Rainier.

The women are thrown together when Grace, still a film star, seeks refuge from a photographer in Sophie Duval's small Cannes shop during the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. The photographer, James Henderson, stumbles in moments after Grace is safely hidden away. From these two, small encounters are born relationships that will ebb and flow through the decades, until Grace's untimely death in 1982.

While one images that Gaynor and Webb set out to create in Sophie a character who was sympathetic and likeable, I found James outshone her in that regard. In many ways, Sophie was actually one of the least enjoyable aspects of the book - James Henderson topped the list, but so did much of the narrative (Grace's journey to Monaco, the making of a scent, Cannes in winter).

Ultimately, Meet Me in Monaco is a three-and-a-half to four star read, easy and fun, no deep thinking required.

American Duchess: A Novel of Consuela Vanderbilt

American Duchess could be said to capitalize on the current duchess fad (I'm thinking Lady Almina, although a certain American duchess undoubtedly also feeds the frenzy), but it reminded me more of novels such as Paris Wife or The Aviator's Wife in the way that it so thoroughly assumes the life and drama of the protagonist, Consuela Vanderbilt Marlborough Balsan.

Unfortunately, I didn't particularly care for or about Consuela. Part of this may owe to the structure of Karen Harper's American Duchess, which alternately raced through the years and slogged through the days (think: the days are long but the years are short), but also that one of the most memorable scenes in the book occurred early, when young Consuela was bemoaning her fate to her longtime governess. Her fate, I'll add here, wasn't particularly pretty. She was essentially auctioned off to the highest bidder, that is best title holder, by her scheming, conniving mother, against whom, rather inexplicably, Consuela could never fully turn. In any case, she is lamenting to Miss Harper that she wants more from life, "[her] own life to live," and Miss Harper reacts viscerally to that, asking young Consuela, "Do you think this is the life I would have chosen for myself?" That conversation stayed with me through the rest of Harper's pages and Consuela's years, and certainly tempered whatever sympathy I might have had.

That said, there can be no question that Consuela lived a rich, varied, and fascinating life. She befriended a bevy of royalty and was particularly close to Winston Churchill. Her second husband was the brother of Etienne Balsan, whom I recalled as one of Coco Chanel's lost loves, though more by her choice than his, if my memory serves me.

Consuela's life spanned the better part of a century; she was married in the Victorian era and the book concludes in the throes of World War II, some 20 years before Consuela's death. From dining with the Czar to fighting for suffrage, she left her mark on her era, and it on her - the events of the time provide as much fodder for Harper as the woman herself. And, Harper has been true to Consuela's personality and life, at least as much as one can glean from a Wikipedia article, which is always gratifying to a reader.

Four stars.

Claude and Camille

I hesitated before reading Stephanie Cowell's Claude and Camille because the genre of Impressionist painter historical fiction had disappointed me thus far (see Luncheon of the Boating Party or The Painted Girls). I needn't have worried; a bit like Monet himself, Claude and Camille is in a class by itself when it comes to this genre.

As any enterprising reader might guess from the title, Claude and Camille is the story of the see-sawing, ultimately tragic relationship between Claude Monet and his first wife, Camille Doncieux. As Wikipedia will tell you in a matter of seconds, she died at 32 of cancer, so no spoilers to say there's no happily ever after here. What Cowell does well, she does very well indeed, and that is to improvise. As she notes in the afterward, the historical record contains very little about Camille, and so Cowell was able to invent a story, populated by real people, artists mainly, and events, but largely of her own invention. What she has created is lovely.

One of the strong suits is the way Cowell incorporates painting, as a noun but especially as a verb, into the work. Because she is not overly constrained by facts, she is free to get into Monet's head in a way that other works of this genre haven't done. As a result, Monet's paintings are sprinkled throughout, while the act of paining, as important and life-giving to Monet as breathing, dominates. Too, I was struck by the way in which she situated Monet in the spaces where he created so many masterpieces, and that his lily pads were not the centerpiece. The church, the haystacks, London in the fog: I could picture Monet's paintings through Cowell's carefully chosen words, which were frequently no more than allusions.

Readers who love the arts, and especially Impressionism, will be smitten. Those who are iffy on the subject may well like Claude and Camille well enough, but I'm a little more hesitant to recommend it to that crowd.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

I blame Shogun. 

Luncheon of the Boating Party isn't bad, it just pales in comparison to Shogun, which leaves Susan Vreeland's work seeming a bit washed out. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Luncheon of the Boating Party is the story of Renoir's painting by the same name, created in 1881, just as France was recovering its composure from the Franco-Prussian war, which would of course set the stage for World War I, but that's another story. Vreeland has taken pains to recreate the circumstances under which Renoir's masterpiece was painted, carefully considering the zeitgeist, as well as the individual models. The models ranged from upper-crust Charles Ephussi to Angele, a sometimes-streetwalker in Montmartre, to say nothing of Aline, who will many years hence become Madame Renoir, and Alphonsine, for whom Renoir's affection is apparent, until she is upstaged by Aline. As the French might say: ouf!

Vreeland has chosen to narrate her work in the voices of Renoir and seven of the models. Although this style can work well, in this case the story felt choppy, leaving gaps here and there. The effect was heightened by the fact that, while the perspective changed, the narrative voice seldom did, such that all of the characters seemed to act and feel alike. Both the characters and the era seemed to me to receive short shrift, although here I am especially cognizant of the fact that, consciously or otherwise, I am comparing them to Shogun, which is more than a little unjust. A more legitimate complaint, I'm certain, is the occasional usage of French, which frequently feels clumsy, interspersed as it is with English in a single phrase, for example the word "two" appearing in English, but the rest in French. I found this both confusing and distracting.

In the sense that Vreeland has imagined the thoughts and feelings of the models as well as Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party reminds me of A Piece of the World. In writing the latter, Christina Baker Kline has the advantage or imaging only one model, not the dozen-plus Vreeland faced; perhaps for this reason, Kline was able to create a depth of character that is lacking in Luncheon of the Boating Party.

So what's the final verdict? Those who love Renoir, or perhaps even Impressionism more generally, will enjoy learning more about the backstory of one his iconic works. It is certainly many measure above The Painted Girls, which belongs to the same genre of creating the backstory for a painting (in this case, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen). I preferred Luncheon of the Boating Party so much that I couldn't help but be that much more cognizant of my own present shortcomings here, in comparing Luncheon with the completed dissimilar Shogun. Alas.

A Good Place to Hide: How One French Community Saved Thousands of Lives During World War II

What better way to ring in the New Year than with a great book? A Good Place to Hide is just that, for not only is the book interesting, well-researched and written, and thoughtfully organized, but it's also an uplifting story.

Peter Grose neatly narrates the history of how the tiny village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (and other surrounding communities of even smaller size) saved thousands of Jews and other "fugitives" from the Vichy regime. A Good Place to Hide is every bit as exciting as The Nightingale or The Paris Architect, but with the added benefit of being a true story. Grose takes care to examine the many facetsiss border, to influential religious leaders who encouraged both non-violence and peaceful resistance from the earliest days of the war. The fact that the people of the Plateau were largely Huguenots who had, themselves, suffered centuries of religious persecution certainly didn't hurt.

As good as the history itself is, I was especially glad for the appendix of what happened to each of the individuals in the book in the years after the war. Sadly, the character who most impressed me, 17-year-old passeur Pierre Piton, who led more than 20 smuggling runs to the Swiss border helping scores of Jews escape France, has essentially disappeared. None of the people Grose interviewed has any idea what Piton may have done after the war, whether he is alive, and if so, where. 

Fans of World War II history will be particularly drawn to this book, but above all, this is an uplifting story of committed individuals working for right, rather than simply accepting wrong. 

Finding Fontainebleau: An American Boy in France

Several years ago I read Julia Child's memoir of her time in France in the immediate post-war years, My Life in France, which is one of the finest memoirs I've read to date. Naturally, then, Finding Fontainebleau, jumped out at me from the pages of a recent Publisher's Weekly. So first:

Thad Carhart was four-years-old when his father was stationed in France as part of the NATO command. The entire family lived in Fontainebleau for three years, during which Thad started school (becoming "Ted" in the process, as Thad proved impossible to render, as he explains in a humorous anecdote), a good, but naughty, student. In Finding Fontainebleau, Carhart looks back on those three years - a giant Chevy station wagon, a brood of five rambunctious children, and a France still awakening from the nightmare that was World War II - while also weaving in the history of Fontainebleau, and by extension the kings and emperors of France. (Side note: it is to my great regret that I have not yet visited Fontainebleau. If this book convinced me of anything, it is that I really must do so at the next opportunity.)

I enjoyed Carhart's style very much, although I found the steady stream of inserted French to be distracting. For me, it was distracting because I could read it, and so the translations served only to repeat what had read in the previous line. I'm not sure if it would be more or less distracting to a non-French speaker. And, while I enjoyed both the memoir aspect as well as the French history lessons, I felt these were often each so short as to be quite choppy. Carhart's interjections about his life in France since returning to live with his own in the late 1980s further served to heighten this sense for me. And, unfairly, I couldn't help but compare it to the incomparable My Life in France. This is entirely unreasonable, as one memoir is told from the perspective of an adult, while the other is a child's memories, but given the time and place, I couldn't help myself.

Francophiles will still, no doubt, enjoy this book. Carhart provides a particularly interesting look at the work of renovation in France and the work that goes into maintaining the country's patrimoine - the churches, chateaux, palaces, and even parks that make France, well, France. He does a great job distilling the cultural quirks of the French and capturing the old Paris of berets, pissotières, and baguettes.

The Matchmaker of Périgord - Did Not Finish

According to Amazon, "For every reader who adored Chocolat, Julia Stuart's The Matchmaker of Périgord is a delectable, utterly enchanting, and sinfully satisfying delight." I tend to disagree.

The premise of Julia Stuart's novel is this: Guillaume Ladoucette is a barber of long-standing whose customer base has aged, lost some hairs, and generally found themselves to have far less need of his services than in years past. Looking around his little town (Amour-sur-Belle, population: 33), Guillaume decides to convert his little barber shop into a matchmaker's office. The results are about what you would expect, or so it seemed when I finally gave it up...

For some reason, I expected The Matchmaker of Périgord to be something like Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (read just before this blog, unfortunately, so the Amazon page will have to suffice). It was not. Neither did it put me in the mind of Chocolat either, despite the lush French countryside Stuart depicts and the somewhat timeless nature of the story. (I thought it was historical fiction when I began, and continually had to revise my guess as to when this was set as more recent dates and events appeared.)

Instead, in light of the innumerable individual quirks, I was reminded of the Confederacy of Dunces, still one of my most-loathed books ever. And, yes, I'm aware that the latter has been described as a masterpiece. To each his own. Call me crazy, but I just don't find two elderly women who have an on-going feud which has been regularly stoked by overripe tomatoes, entertaining. And I was frankly revolted by the idea of an "ancient cassoulet" which has been tended for decades first by Madame Ladoucette and now by her son the barber-turned-matchmaker. On the whole, I found all of the characters very weird, and I just couldn't move beyond that.

I have only myself to blame, as I did not care for Stuart's previous novel, The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise for many of the same reasons. Alas, c'est la vie.

Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure

Earlier this spring I read and reviewed The Nightingale and complained about what I perceive to be the over-saturation of the French Resistance genre within World War II historical fiction. I wanted a more nuanced history, I said, one that acknowledged the reality that every Frenchman was not for Charles de Gaulle or the Maquis. 

Well, it’s not fiction, but Wine and War fits the bill. Donald Kladstrup and Petie Kladstrup have written an insightful, multi-dimensional, and frankly fascinating account of the actions of French winemakers (and, in some cases, restaurateurs) during World War II. Some were actively engaged in the Resistance. Many undertook their own, independent acts of subterfuge or rebellion against the Germans. A few collaborated with the boches.  

The authors Kladstrup also take pains to ensure their readers understand that not all Germans were created equal. Many of those responsible for the oversight of the wine and champagne industries in France were Francophiles - a few had previously owed their own maisons before losing the property following Germany's loss in World War I. Often they wanted to preserve the French heritage, tradition, and friendships in spite of orders from above. Others were keen profiteers. 

Most impressively, this is not a textbook history, per se, but more of an anthropological one. The Kladstrups conducted countless interviews with French and German survivors of the war, as well as their children and sometimes grandchildren. They have taken pains to tell the history of wine in France and the winemaking process, as well, rather than diving directly into the events of the second World War. Taken together, this is a fascinating history, and would that should interest history lovers and especially World War II buffs and Francophile of all stripes.

The Nightingale

The Nightingale begins in 1939, on the eve of war, as Antoine Mauriac and his neighbor Marc de Champlain, prepare to say good bye to their wives, Vianne and Rachel (best friends since childhood), and their daughters, Sophie and Sarah (a second generation of best friends), and head to the front. None of them believes war truly awaits, but as they and the rest of Carriveau's residents soon discover, await it does.

One person who understand war with Germany is Vianne's father, Julien, who returned from the last one a broken, bitter man. Despite his younger daughter's pleas to remain with him, he packs Isabelle off to Carriveau to live with Vianne and Sophie, much to the women's dismay. While Vianne pines for Antoine and struggles to face the war without him, Isabelle is determined to fight, seeking out the Resistance and escalating her role.

Overall, The Nightingale is a wonderful read. Kristin Hannah has created multi-faceted characters who grapple with the black of collaboration and the white of resistance and all of the shades of gray in between. Their choices, too often, are imperfect, both because they are human and because war has removed the luxury of good choices from their lives.

My only quibble with The Nightingale is not even a quibble with the book, per se. It is that The Nightingale is one in a long line of novels set in wartime France whose protagonists and, the majority of characters, are actively involved in the Resistance. (All the Light We Cannot See and The Paris Architect are other examples of this style.) The truth, though, is much more complicated: ultimately, very few Frenchmen (and women) were involved in the Resistance; recent numbers suggest there were 10,000 active members of the Resistance in 1942. By 1945 the number had grown to roughly 200,000, still a very small segment out of a population of 40 million. Authors want to create characters whom readers like, no doubt, but taken collectively, these works simply fuel the (false) belief that all good Frenchmen actively resisted the occupation.

First to Fly: The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille, the American Heroes Who Flew For France in World War I

First to Fly: The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille, the American Heroes Who Flew For France in World War I deserves points for being one of the most succinct World War I books I've read. It is the story of Americans fighting in the war prior to the U.S.'s entry in 1917. Specifically, it's a brief history of the Lafayette Escadrille, or the French army's flight squadron that was comprised almost entirely of Americans. (In that sense, it is complementary to Over the Top, which is the memoir of an American fighting with British forces in the trenches.)

Author Charles Bracelen Flood does a great job of presenting not only, as I mentioned, an incredibly succinct rendering of the entire war, but especially of creating full-bodied portraits of each of the men who served in the Lafayette Escadrille. For what it's worth, Bert Hall and Raoul Lufbery particularly stand out.

Flood also brings home the reality of wartime flight, which was both cold and terrifying, seeing as it was conducted from open cockpits. As he notes, the war began a mere decade after the Wright Brothers took to the air. I was actually surprised at what a quick read this was, particularly in comparison to so many other war-related books. I enjoyed that it focused on a relatively obscure part of the war, given that this was a war of trenches, but the development of which was arguably the most important warfare advancement since the invention of the wheel. An excellent and engaging read - and I'll be adding Bert Hall's memoir, En L'Air, to my reading list.

Somewhere in France

Not long after The Great War begins, Lady Elizabeth Neville-Ashford defies her family, ditches her title, learns to drive, and joins the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps - where she is posted somewhere in France as an ambulance driver. Not coincidentally, she is attached the the field hospital where her older brother's dearest friend is a surgeon. Predictably, romance ensues.

I could not shake the feeling that Jennifer Robson's Somewhere in France was vaguely familiar. But not until I read my entry on The Walnut Tree, did I realize how similar the stories are. (To recap, Lady Elspeth Douglas defies her family, lays her title aside, and enlists in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service in The Walnut Tree.)

Still, I rather liked Somewhere in France. Yes, there's a war on and, yes, men are dying, but Robson's writing is light and quick, and the characters are generally likeable. For these reasons, it's a quick read. The plot was obvious from the opening paragraphs, but Robson does bring a new angle to women's work in World War I. That said, the verdict is still out on whether I'll read the next book in the series.

All the Light We Cannot See

I can't write much (anything?) about Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See that has not already been written. It is a truly fantastic book, worthy of the many commendations it has received, and the rave reviews others have posted (including Viola, who first encouraged me to read this months ago...I've been the time since on my library's waiting list!).

So, a bit of synopsis: Marie-Laure is a blind Parisian, the only daughter of a widower who makes it his mission to help her be as independent as possible. Through the construction of intricate models that include every tree, curb, and drain, she feels her way - first with her fingers, then with her cane - through their arrondissement. When Germany invades France, everything changes, not least because her father, as a longtime, loyal employee of the Museum of Natural History is changed with safeguarding a national treasure. They leave Paris for St-Malo, an ancient walled city surrounded by ocean. (As a side note, I must add here that St-Malo is truly stunning. If you every have the opportunity to visit, do so! And as you do, consider that everything you see is a reconstruction - the city was absolutely destroyed in the war, and the buildings rebuilt, literally from their same stones. It's an amazing experience. But I digress.)

Ultimately, from her great-uncle's house in St-Malo, Marie Laure crosses paths with the young German soldier, Werner, whose only happiness in an orphanage came when tinkering with radios. His skill leads him to become a top resistance tracker for the Nazis, although slowly his conscience begins to gnaw at him.

As I said at the beginning, All the Light We Cannot See is a truly fantastic novel. The characters are well developed and convincing, the story arcs are compelling, and the history - of Paris and St-Malo both - is superbly accurate. I was reminded time and again of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, another World War II historical fiction that I loved. (For what it's worth, you can actually take a ferry to Guernsey from St-Malo; I very much hope to do so one day.) Like Markus Zusak, Doerr provides a realistic glimpse of the German people during wartime, and the varied perspectives, motivations, and deprivations of life in Nazi Germany.

Having just read And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II, I wondered as I read to what extent Doerr drew inspiration from Jacques Lusseyran; his memoir is one of the first texts named in the acknowledgements.

If you haven't yet read this book, you should. Even if you have to wait months for your library's copy.

And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II

As the title suggest, Jacques Lusseyran was both blind and a hero of the French Resistance. He also had the misfortune of dying in a car crash at age 46. And so I feel an almost moral compunction to be gentle with his memoir. 

That said, I  did not finish it. I almost gave up before the Germans had even invaded Poland (which happens somewhere around one-third of the way into the book) and ultimately did give up before Lusseyran was betrayed by a member of his own network (and I quit more than two-thirds of the way through).

The difficulty for me lies in that fact that And There Was Light reads as much like a philosophy treatise as a wartime memoir. I might have been okay skimming the pages upon pages of musings on the meaning of life and light and love, were the passages on the nature of the resistance work and the war itself more compelling. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. In fact Lusseyran sometimes skips over large chunks of his wartime experience with a single "the next six months were a battle." 

No question, I admire Lusseyran's resilience and, yes, heroism. I wish that his story were told more clearly, however, and in a more focused manner. Readers of the Resistance will find these traits in The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944, which tells the broader story of the French Resistance.

The Walnut Tree

Lady Elspeth Douglas is in Paris keeping company with her aristocratic - and heavily pregnant - friend, Madeleine Villard, when the German Army races through Belgium and the French army is mobilized. To the front must go Madeleine's husband, Henri, and her brother, Alain, the latter of whom is also Lady Elspeth's fiance.

Elspeth remains in France to see Madeleine through childbirth and then returns home through war-torn northern France to the Channel. What she sees their - carnage beyond anything her mind could have conjured - and who she meets - Captain Peter Gilchrist - change the course of her future. No longer content to be a prim and proper aristocrat, Lady Elspeth defies her family, lays her title aside, and enlists in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service.

Despite the backdrop of World War I, The Walnut Tree is generally a light (and quick) read. The characters are agreeable, the romance is not too overdone, the plot is not too predictable. (Actually, there were quite a few twists and turns - which made sense when I learned that Charles Todd primarily writes mysteries.) Somewhat bizarrely, there is a subplot about the looting of valuables from abandoned homes in France and Belgium. This added nothing to the overall story and, while it didn't take much away, either, it did leave me completely scratching my head as to why it had been randomly included. Perhaps that mystery thing again.

Despite being set in a different war, The Walnut Tree frequently reminded me of The House at Tyneford, although I cannot put my finger on the reasons why. (In style it is similar to The Book Thief, and I think this may also be YA, which I'm discovering to be a broad and poorly defined genre. But I digress.) In any event, lovers of historical fiction - and, as the publisher notes, Downton Abbey - should certainly enjoy The Walnut Tree.

Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

I am of two minds about Madame Tussaud, Michelle Moran's recounting of the famous waxmaker in her pre-London fame days.

Marie Grosholtz (later Tussaud) is ambitious, Moran does not let us forget that. She has a great head for business, although more for the numbers than for giving the people what they want: the latter she must still learn at the knee of her mentor-uncle-father-protector, Philippe Curtius. Marie's skill with wax is unrivaled; not only does she create the displays to which rich and poor alike do flock, but on the eve of the French Revolution, she is invited to Versailles to become the tutor to Louis XVI's pious younger sister, the Princess Elisabeth. In the months and years that follow, Marie's world is torn apart by the revolution and ensuing Reign of Terror.

Based in historical fact and events, the first half is excellent. The book begins to unravel about two-thirds from the finish, though, as Moran compresses months and then years into a mere two or three pages, whereas the initial chapters might comprise a single day each. The story begins to suffer. Admittedly, I was also a bit put off by the character of Henri Charles. Not as Moran has created him - no he's very nice and sympathetic - but his mere presence. For while Grosholtz/Tussaud, Curtius, the royal family, and revolutionaries (chiefly Marat, Robespierre, and Desmoulins) were all real people, Henri Charles exists between the pages of Madame Tussaud alone. (A fact, a might add, the Moran should make clearer as she gives a post-revolution round-up of each of the figures who appeared in this book.)

I understand that much about Tussaud's life is suspect: a showwoman to her last, those who know best advise taking Tussaud's own memoirs with a grain of salt. Or two. Perhaps Moran felt the book needed a bit of romance, or perhaps she learned of some former flame, but in either case, I wish she had clarified this (as, for example, did Melanie Benjamin in advising readers of The Aviator's Wife just how much came from history and how much from her pen).

If you're dying to read a novel set during the French Revolution and you don't mind a co-mingling of real and imagined characters, Madame Tussaud is a rich and entertaining read. (And I still very much prefer it to Annette Vallon.)

The Corpse with the Silver Tongue

When I reviewed And the Mountains Echoed a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that author Khaled Hosseini was a headline speaker at a conference I was attending. I did not mention that the conference was a kind of heaven for bibliophiles and that the exhibit hall was populated with publishers eagerly offering complimentary copies of their latest titles (and in more than a few cases advance copies of books to be published later this year). The Corpse with the Silver Tongue is one of the complimentary titles I picked up, with a promise to the publisher that I would post a review to a website of my choosing.

So...

Somewhat in the style of Agatha Christie, our detective, Cait Morgan - who is really a criminologist rather than a pure detective - happens to be in the south of France when an old acquaintance (a smooth talking former ad man whom Cait used to work for and now loathes) drops dead at the dinner table. As with many good mysteries, and this is a fine one, one death is never enough. Cait is then plunged headlong into the mystery surrounding an ancient Roman necklace that disappears almost exactly at the moment its owner meets his maker. Thus the crimes, suspense, and story all build.

The strongest aspect of this novel is the plot. At its height, it's a gripping page turner, the outcome of which will not wait to be known. (I read more than one chapter from the backseat of a rush hour cab...and I'm normally prone to motion sickness!) In this way, it's similar to Once We Were Brothers (the two mysteries also share a connection to World War II history) or Bury Your Dead. On the whole, however, I enjoyed Corpse less than either of those books. The reason is Cait Morgan. I found our criminologist/detective to be overly present, to the point of distracting from the story. This is especially true where the reader is privy to her private thoughts (such as the incessant refrain that she must lose weight or quit smoking - but probably won't). Worse is Ace's over-reliance on italics to emphasize a word a point. On certain pages I couldn't help but count the number of italicized words, to the point of needing to go back and re-read the page to focus on what I'd missed with all my counting!

Worse than either of these faults - and the first one, especially, is not so different from some of the faults I identified with Once We Were Brothers - is Cait's naivete, nay recklessness, at a key moment in the story. At that moment, she lost all credibility with me as either a criminologist or a detective and my patience - and interest - waned.

The Corpse with the Silver Tongue is author Cathy Ace's debut novel. The actual mystery, as I said, was good. Perhaps like a fine wine, Ace will also grow better with age. 

Suite Française

This is a work of fiction, set during the early days of World War II in France as the Maginot Line was falling and the French were coming to terms with the reality of a third war with Germany in as many generations. As the Germans marched toward Paris, those in the city decided whether to remain or head elsewhere in France and those in the Occupied Zone found themselves forced to house the conquerors beneath their own roofs. The characters existed in the notebooks of Irene Nemirovsky alone, but the story is as much non-fiction as fiction, for she wrote it as she and her family grappled with the reality of the war that had descended upon them.

Perhaps because it was written during the war, as events happened, and not from a distance with the benefit of hindsight - or even knowing how things would end - there is no fine line between collaboration and resistance, no acts of great heroism or cowardice. These people are simply trying to make it from one day to the next.

Nemirovsky was a Russian Jew; her family's fortune had been stripped during the Bolshevik Revolution and they'd been forced into exile in France; twenty years later this status left her pesona non grata in her adopted country and she wrote feverishly in an attempt to leave a record of what it meant to be a refugee and what it was to be amidst the confusion and loss of war. When she writes about "the reluctant tears of the very old who have finally accepted that sorrow is futile," the reader knows these words are the experience of a woman grown old before her time; likewise, when she muses on whether one will see the post-war life, it is clear she is speaking not only of her characters. In fact, Nemirovsky was arrested and deported to Auschwitz only weeks after writing in her notebook "...I do not lack the courage to complete the task / But the goal is far and time is short." What she was able to complete is still a remarkable book.

French Lessons

French Lessons, by Alice Kaplan, was a University of Chicago Press free e-book of the month that I downloaded several months ago and have ploddingly worked my way through for most of the summer. The briefest description is this: it is the memoir of a Duke French professor. In truth, it is a bit more than that, particularly for anyone who has ever navigated the vagaries of a university department, searched for a dissertation topic, or wondered how life might be different had they never traveled to a far off land or learned another language.

I came to see this book as neatly divided into three parts. Part one is the story of a young girl growing up in suburban Minneapolis in the 1950s and 1960s. That her father was a lawyer at the Nuremburg trials lends interest, and that he dies of a heart attack when she is still in elementary school lends tragedy, but at its heart part one is about being a kid in the midwest in the halycon days after World War II (and then attending a boarding school in Switzerland, but I digress).

Part two is the story of a graduate student searching for a topic, trying to understand theories and the people who create them, and forging an identity as an intellectual and scholar. Honestly, this is the part of the book where I almost gave it. Kaplan spends a bit too long, in my opinion, covering the theories of French literature, for a mainstream audience. (Or even an engaged, knowledgeable one. I was a French major, and I've only just read this book, but I'm drawing a blank trying to name a single theory that was described in detail over dozens of pages.)

Part three is the story of a professor, sometimes young, sometimes not, making her way through the politics of departments and universities, connecting with students, and asking herself questions that I myself have often wondered: how would my life have been different if I'd never spent time in a foreign country when I young? How would my life have been different if I'd never learned French? In what ways has it changed how I think about the world? Can I even separate it from the other parts of my life? (The answer to all four, for Kaplan as well as for me, is pretty strongly, "I don't know.")

I liked this book. If I were to read it again - or recommend it to someone else to read - I'd say to skip the theory. Ultimately, for this book - as for most of life - theory doesn't really matter.