Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - The Paris Library

Oof. Would not have finished were it not our book club pick this month.
Historical fiction but with no authentic sense of place. There were brief moments where the book was good, and the premise was a great story starting point! But overall the execution was trite and unlikable and a waste of a good idea. The worst part was reading the author’s notes at the end, and seeing how much potential this topic had in the hands of a more adept writer or with a better developmental editor that could help create actual character arcs that are satisfying.

My main issues:
- flowery writing stuffed with so many similes and metaphors that you’re often tripping over five in one paragraph. It makes the writing feel so trite and amateur, like reading a middle school age book report.

- I am biased against first person POV generally, but I especially hated that the two leads, Odile and Lily, were written with the same voice and immaturity. They both behaved and thought like a bratty teenager, which made sense for Lily, but Odile was purportedly a college grad and a woman so independently minded that she sought a career when it was unusual to do so. But other than that one act, she is a naïve idiot for the rest of the book. She is constantly cruel and judgmental to her “closest friends,” a thoughtless gossip, and does some truly heinous things throughout the book.

- She has moments of reflection (which oddly are written like they are reflections from the future and she’s telling the story of the past, but then the next line the verbs are present tense again? ) but she doesn’t actually learn from any of her choices until she runs away to Montana and takes no accountability with those she harms.

- “Do as I say, not as I did….” Is not a character arc.

- She claims innocence about the apartment trysts, but even if she had no idea the real reason why the apartments were empty… what possible explanation would have made her behavior ok? There was no excuse regardless of the real explanation?

- The world building lacked an authentic sense of place. Descriptions were glutted with unimportant factual details that didn’t create an emotional response, like an AP Euro history paper stuffed with rote memorizarion in an attempt to earn extra credit from the teacher. Yeah, you did the research — but fact-stuffing like that doesn’t evoke a sense of place and time.

- Overall, the character arcs were so messy and all over the place, so you were left with no one worth rooting for, except Mary Louise and maybe Lily. And Odile wasn’t worth loving to hate either. Just a frustrating trudge through a book that attempts to tell a story about a time of great complexity and conflict, but gives us the POV of a simpleton with no nuance or understanding of the world around her. She bumbles through the story, and the reader does too. She faces no consequences for her actions, and just runs away. It is the most uneventful non-development of a character arc.

- And seriously, I cannot overstate how many cheesy similes and metaphors were packed into this book. It was astonishing. If this hadn’t already been such a disappointing waste of time, I’d go back through and keep a tally.

Overall, deeply “meh” that veered into “ugh” territory regularly.

Content Warnings

zoepagereader's review

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adventurous emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I was intrigued by this one. I had never heard of the American Library of Paris nor did I know that that was a thing countries did. However much I enjoyed that aspect it though, I didn’t understand why it was necessary to add 80’s Orile’s story in, much less told through a different person’s perspective. Not to mention the horrid amount of slut-shaming that took place throughout the book. “Oh she’s wearing furs when people are starving? What a slut.”It just made no sense it the contexts it was frequently used in. I think the majority of the characters could have handled their problems better, or at the very least not take their anger out on others.

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heylookitsjan's review

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emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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charity1313's review

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adventurous informative inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I know the dual timeline narrative is popular right now and it was an okay device for this story but I didn't think it was necessary. I found myself annoyed when the story would skip to the future timeline. I didn't really care about the modern storyline and, in the end, it seemed like a plot device thrown in to create extra tension, an extra pause, for what the narrator wasn't telling us about her past...but it still wasn't necessary. 1) There was enough foreshadowing to know what was coming though perhaps not the specifics. 2) The delay in telling the whole truth was plausible even without jumping timelines over and over. It felt like the second storyline was added just to meet a publisher checklist and add length to the book. Or maybe some editor somewhere thought the original story wasn't enough on its own? Idk but I could have lived without it.

I appreciated that the author's note was included in the audio version so I only had to hunt down a bit of information myself. It actually seemed like this group of people had an easier time of things during the war than many, perhaps even most, of the books I've read from this time period so it surprised me and I had to go looking it up but the author's note also provided more clarity.

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nonbinarylibrarianwitch's review

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Paris Library is based on the true World War II story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris. In Paris 1939, young and ambitious Odile Souchet has everything she could want, a handsome police officer beau and her dream job at the American Library in Paris (ALP). When the Nazis march into Paris, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including the library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. Yet, at the end of the war, Odile doesn't have freedom but unspeakable betrayal.

Odile is a typical twenty-something year old. She feels her emotions just under the surface and is quick to speak without thinking first. While she knows and loves words and books and the power they have, she has yet to see how her words have power to do anything. It took a bit for me to get into the book, a couple of chapters, but so worth it and would definitely tell people to keep going.

Once the Nazis arrive, Odile's job changes. Since Jews are not allowed in the ALP (along with certain materials no longer being allowed to circulate), the librarians, Odile included, take turns delivering books to their patrons who are longer allowed into the library. While the summary has it seem that the focus is on the Resistance work of the librarians, there's more to it than that. It's about what people are willing to do during horrible times and what they are pushed to do. Through anger and fear and sadness and jealously, we are all our worst enemy at times.

Odile learns that her beau, Paul, is part of the officers rounding up Jews. One of the people he brings in is her beloved patron, Professor Irene Cohen. Not only is Paul working to bring in Jews, but Odile's papa is a captain (I think) of a police station and is tasked with investigating "crow" letters. Crow Letters are sent in by people who turn in those who are Jews or say bad things about Germans or listen to the BBC. They are people who turn in family members, friends, neighbors. Odile soon starts to take the letters from her father's office and burning them during her lunch break, but she is soon found out by him and has to stop. It is all horrible business.

Along with hearing about Odile's story, we also have Lily's story. In Montana 1983, Lily is a lonely teenager looking for adventure in small-town Montana. She soon forms a friendship with her elderly neighbor, Odile. Throughout Lily's teenage years Odile reveals stories of her life in Paris and her time during the war. I was a bit let down by Lily's story and didn't much get the point of including it in the novel. There wasn't anything bad and I could see the similarities present in Lily that Odile had when she was young. Other than that, there wasn't anything connecting the two, (besides the random fact that they were neighbors), and from the summary, I was left with the impression that there would've been a family connection or someone in Lily's family tree that connected her to Odile.

Other than that, the novel was gorgeously written and was a great window into a time period that I know about but didn't know about the work the librarians at ALP did. I definitely would like to learn more about them. I absolutely love and agree with what Charles writes in her author's note at the end. She explains about the real life of some of the characters, along with bringing up how people like to ask themselves what they would have done during World War II. She thinks a better question is to ask what we would do to ensure that libraries and learning are accessible to all and that we treat people with dignity and compassion. Definitely a book that has you think and one I would recommend to all!

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