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stevienlcf 's review for:
The Girl You Left Behind
by Jojo Moyes
Jo Jo Moye’s latest book seems reminiscent of a Jodi Picoult “ripped from the headlines” novel. In this case, the subject is a battle over art allegedly looted during wartime. The novel opens in 1916 in the provincial French town of St. Peronn. Two sisters, Sophie and Helene, maintain their family’s hotel and restaurant, Le Coq Rouge, while their husbands are at the front. Their town occupied by German troops, the residents of St. Peronn live “amid a great sea of uncertainty, deprivation and fear.” The German Kommandant demands that the sisters feed and house his soldiers causing the townspeople to assume that the sisters are receiving “German largesse.” Despite the public censure, Sophie strikes up a wary friendship with the Kommandant, a cultured man who appreciates art and admires a portrait of Sophie, “the glowing girl willful in her confidence,” painted by her husband Edourd Lefevre. When Sophie learns that Edourd may be among the men sent to a notoriously brutal reprisal camp, her love for Edourd and her “desperation for their life together to continue,” leads her to make a fateful decision.
After Sophie is arrested by German soldiers and escorted from the town in front of her censorious, jeering neighbors to a fate unknown, the novel abruptly moves forward to 2006 London where a beautiful (of course) young widow, Olivia Halston, is sitting in her austere Glass House, a house designed by her late husband, staring at Sophie’s portrait (the titular “The Girl You Left Behind”) that her late husband had purchased in Barcelona. Awash in debt and grief, she meets cute the handsome Paul McCafferty and is surprised by her attraction to this kind and gentle stranger. Paul, naturally, is in the business of recovering stolen artwork, and his latest commission is to recover works of art by Edourd Lefevre, including “The Girl You Left Behind.” Despite mounting public sentiment that she should return the painting to the rightful heirs, Liv contests the case.
During the ensuing trial, Moye masterfully uncovers the clues to Sophie’s fate as well as the fate of “The Girl You left Behind.” Despite some unfortunate and unnecessary plot manipulations, and some stock characters (Liv’s Goth sidekick), Moye has written a compulsively readable novel that raises thought-provoking moral questions.
After Sophie is arrested by German soldiers and escorted from the town in front of her censorious, jeering neighbors to a fate unknown, the novel abruptly moves forward to 2006 London where a beautiful (of course) young widow, Olivia Halston, is sitting in her austere Glass House, a house designed by her late husband, staring at Sophie’s portrait (the titular “The Girl You Left Behind”) that her late husband had purchased in Barcelona. Awash in debt and grief, she meets cute the handsome Paul McCafferty and is surprised by her attraction to this kind and gentle stranger. Paul, naturally, is in the business of recovering stolen artwork, and his latest commission is to recover works of art by Edourd Lefevre, including “The Girl You Left Behind.” Despite mounting public sentiment that she should return the painting to the rightful heirs, Liv contests the case.
During the ensuing trial, Moye masterfully uncovers the clues to Sophie’s fate as well as the fate of “The Girl You left Behind.” Despite some unfortunate and unnecessary plot manipulations, and some stock characters (Liv’s Goth sidekick), Moye has written a compulsively readable novel that raises thought-provoking moral questions.