Yes, I am slowly dipping my toes back into WWII fiction. I just could not resist the Library setting in this one!!!
What I loved about this story:
-It is based on real people, real events, and a real library!
-I learned several historical facts about Paris during WWII.
-The Dewey Decimal System!!!!!
-So many books and authors are mentioned throughout, and quoted pertinent to the events in the book, that I kept a list. Very interesting to consider the books that were popular in the '30's and '40's.
-There is a love story or two, but friendship and relationships with colleagues is more forefront.
- The relationship between Odile and Lily.
-The relationship between Lily and Eleanor. There is a lot to unpack here about teenagers and blended families, and standing up for yourself, from Lily, Eleanor and Odile!
-The author does a good job of presenting how people were so torn during wartime - to do their jobs sometimes they had to betray their friends, or vice versa. Wartimes lead to impossible decisions and actions that would never have happened during peace. Walking in other's shoes and skin indeed......
- Even though it is a split timeline, we spend the majority of the novel in the further past (I still have a hard time thinking 1987 qualifies for historical fiction, but that is just me showing my age!).
- The author nailed being a 1980's teenager with angst, grief, and parents that don't understand.
-Did I mention it is a book about books????? Well, sort of, they are an important secondary character at least!
What I did not really like:
-Young Odile. UGH! So immature, even after college. Maybe that is a statement on the mindset of society about young unmarried girls who during that time still live with their parents until they got married. But it grated on my nerves that her mother still told her to turn out her light at bedtime, and how she threw temper tantrums and could not keep her mouth shut. She meant well, and I guess no one is perfect especially when young, but it just took her a long time to learn not to stick her nose in and tattle. And to face her jealousies - the whole thing with Bitsi was another tantrum.
-Even Odile skirted around her duplicity with Margaret. That plot was heartbreaking all around.
-Lots of loose ends at the end, esp re: Odile and her past relationships. I did like how the author really waited til the last minute to reveal all, but I wanted a bit more wrap up, even if the wrap up wasn't happy. Many of her actions, especially when she moved to Montana and how that happened, just did not add up. I could not reconcile the woman who turned her light off at midnight bc Maman yelled at her with the woman who eloped.
- I know it is literary license, but I did not appreciate the timing of when she met Buck. Way too easy.
Overall, a nice read, good historical fiction, I liked more than I didn't, and it definitely kept me reading to figure out what the book flap meant by betrayal. And I think there is so much to discuss here, it would make a solid book club book. The Author's note at the end explains how so much of this is a true story and which of the characters were real people, and that she learned of these people and stories and how they risked themselves to send books to soldiers and Jews while she was working at the American Library of Paris herself! Cool!!!
PS If you are interested in other WWII books that aren't necessarily about the WAR (as in battles), check out Those Who Save Us by Jenna Bloom; The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck; or The Riviera House by Natasha Lester (very similar to The Paris Library in that they are both split timelines and focus on books and art during the war).
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