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A review by ridgewaygirl
Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman
4.0
I was uncertain about this book going in. I loved Ellen Feldman's novel about the Scottsboro trial in the 1930s, but I've been burned before by books set in Paris during WWII and by books set in bookstores in Paris, so a book set in a Paris bookstore during WWII seems to have the highest possible chance of being terrible. Fortunately, this was not the case. Feldman has written a nuanced novel about surviving in an occupied city as a widow with a young child without romanticizing the choices she made.
This novel moves back and forth between Charlotte's experiences during and immediately after the war, and her life in New York in the 1950's where she found refuge with a former colleague of her father's. He and his wife provide her with housing and a job in publishing. Her daughter remembers little before their life in New York, where she is entering adolescence and wondering both about her father and her Jewish faith. Her daughter's questions bring back memories Charlotte is working to bury, as does a letter she receives from South America.
Feldman never romanticizes the decisions Charlotte made during the war, and she also makes each character, regardless of who they were or what they did, someone who is also making difficult and sometimes impossible choices. There are no clean consciences and no one emerges without scars. Feldman's writing is clear and she's scrupulous in both her plots and her research. While this one does not supplant Scottsboro as my favorite novel by this author, Paris Never Leaves You comes a close second.
This novel moves back and forth between Charlotte's experiences during and immediately after the war, and her life in New York in the 1950's where she found refuge with a former colleague of her father's. He and his wife provide her with housing and a job in publishing. Her daughter remembers little before their life in New York, where she is entering adolescence and wondering both about her father and her Jewish faith. Her daughter's questions bring back memories Charlotte is working to bury, as does a letter she receives from South America.
Feldman never romanticizes the decisions Charlotte made during the war, and she also makes each character, regardless of who they were or what they did, someone who is also making difficult and sometimes impossible choices. There are no clean consciences and no one emerges without scars. Feldman's writing is clear and she's scrupulous in both her plots and her research. While this one does not supplant Scottsboro as my favorite novel by this author, Paris Never Leaves You comes a close second.