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A review by wherethewildreadsare
Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman
4.0
“The world isn’t black and white. It’s a gray and shadowy landscape out there.”
Let me start by saying that this book is not about a Resistance Fighter, this is not about the camps. But this is about survival. This is about a woman in Occupied Paris, doing whatever she can to survive. And to keep her very young toddler alive. She accepted the food and the assistance of a German soldier/physician occupying Paris. Their relationship grew. And as it grew, so did her desperation to survive as the War came to an end with the impending liberation of Paris.
“Survival never comes with a clear conscience.”
Many women were shamed for what they did, even murdered in the end. Called a “Collabo Horizontale” But can we fault someone for doing what was needed to survive? All’s fair in love and war, right?
“Hitler made me a Jew”
While this book does an excellent job giving the background story/context of her time during the War, it is more heavily about Charlottes’s life afterwards, over a decade later in NYC. And the downstream effects her choices during the War made in her life. Her secrets that she so badly does not want to relive or remember, as her daughter, now a young teenager, tries to understand where she comes from and her identity. Charlotte grows to realize that the only way to truly move on is to face the decisions that were made during the worst parts of her life.
I’m a major WWII hist fic junkie & most stories I end up reading are about individuals either in the camp or Resistance. All doing what they can to survive. This one was still a story of survival. There were many women just like Charlotte in the war and I think it’s important that their stories are also told.
My only gripe with this book is that there was not any major indication for when the timelines changed from Past to Present. It made things a little confusing until I came to the realization of WHEN I was a few paragraphs in. Additionally, I would’ve liked to know roughly the year they were in as the story went on. It always seemed like an obscure passing of time.
Let me start by saying that this book is not about a Resistance Fighter, this is not about the camps. But this is about survival. This is about a woman in Occupied Paris, doing whatever she can to survive. And to keep her very young toddler alive. She accepted the food and the assistance of a German soldier/physician occupying Paris. Their relationship grew. And as it grew, so did her desperation to survive as the War came to an end with the impending liberation of Paris.
“Survival never comes with a clear conscience.”
Many women were shamed for what they did, even murdered in the end. Called a “Collabo Horizontale” But can we fault someone for doing what was needed to survive? All’s fair in love and war, right?
“Hitler made me a Jew”
While this book does an excellent job giving the background story/context of her time during the War, it is more heavily about Charlottes’s life afterwards, over a decade later in NYC. And the downstream effects her choices during the War made in her life. Her secrets that she so badly does not want to relive or remember, as her daughter, now a young teenager, tries to understand where she comes from and her identity. Charlotte grows to realize that the only way to truly move on is to face the decisions that were made during the worst parts of her life.
I’m a major WWII hist fic junkie & most stories I end up reading are about individuals either in the camp or Resistance. All doing what they can to survive. This one was still a story of survival. There were many women just like Charlotte in the war and I think it’s important that their stories are also told.
My only gripe with this book is that there was not any major indication for when the timelines changed from Past to Present. It made things a little confusing until I came to the realization of WHEN I was a few paragraphs in. Additionally, I would’ve liked to know roughly the year they were in as the story went on. It always seemed like an obscure passing of time.