Tag: France

The Lost Orphans of Lyon by Helen Parusel

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There are so many books set during the two world wars, it can be easy to think that you’ve read enough of them and don’t need any more…but I’m so pleased I didn’t overlook The Lost Orphans of Lyon. Although I’ve read other novels about the French Resistance, this one touches on aspects that were new to me, such as the role of the Huguenot community of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in sheltering hundreds of child refugees fleeing the Nazis.

Although the novel is inspired by real historical events, the story is told through the eyes of two fictional women. Yvette Dubois and her husband Armand have been married for just two weeks when they receive the news that Armand’s brother, Lucien, has died, leaving them to inherit his crumbling château and vineyard in the French countryside. Armand insists that he can’t leave his business in Lyon, so it falls to Yvette to take on the management of their new property. With only a hostile housekeeper for company, Yvette is annoyed at being abandoned so early into her marriage, but she soon finds a sense of purpose when she hears a knocking from behind a tapestry in the library. Pulling back the tapestry, she opens a hidden door to discover a young woman with two small children. It seems that Lucien was part of an escape network smuggling vulnerable children to safety in the nearby village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

To put things in context, it’s September 1942 and a large part of France is under Nazi occupation. The area around Lucien’s château has remained part of the ‘free zone’, but will soon become occupied as well. When Yvette decides to continue Lucien’s work, she knows how dangerous it will be – particularly when she learns that Armand is collaborating with the Germans.

Part of the book is also written from the perspective of Marie, a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in Chambon. Marie is in love with Pierre, a man who has joined the maquis – the band of armed fighters hiding in the countryside and working on behalf of the French Resistance. Determined to play her own part in defying the Nazis, Marie takes on the job of collecting the children at the other end of the tunnel from the château and bringing them to the village to be housed.

Yvette and Marie are both very engaging characters – two women from completely different backgrounds, but dedicated to the same cause. I liked both of them and was equally invested in each of the two narratives. This is a book I didn’t want to put down…and when I did have to, I couldn’t wait to get back to it! With the stakes being so high, there’s a real sense of danger throughout the novel (the Nazi characters are as horrible and brutal as you would expect) and there’s no guarantee that any of the people involved in the escape chain are going to survive.

As well as the storyline with the children, Yvette and Marie both have their own personal stories – Yvette’s discovery that her husband isn’t the man she thought she knew and Marie’s love for Pierre, despite the disapproval of her parents – as well as some subplots involving other characters, such as the servants at the château. I thought the balance between the historical and the personal was just about right, although other readers may prefer more or less of one or the other. Overall, though, I found this a vivid and moving portrayal of life in Occupied France.

This is the first book I’ve read by Helen Parusel. I see she has written three others dealing with the resistance movements in other parts of Europe, so after enjoying this book so much, I would definitely like to try another one. I just need to decide which one to choose next!

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Letter to My Judge by Georges Simenon

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Translated by Howard Curtis

Georges Simenon is more famous for his Maigret detective series, but he also wrote a large number of standalone psychological thrillers which he described as romans durs, or ‘hard novels’, in reference to the dark, bleak atmosphere and difficult, harrowing lives of the characters. I’ve read five of them now and Letter to My Judge is the darkest so far. It was originally published in French in 1947 and is now available from Penguin Classics in a new English translation.

As the title suggests, the book is written in the form of a letter. The writer is Dr Charles Alavoine and we know from the beginning that he is in prison, having just been found guilty of murder. The Judge of the title is an examining magistrate, or juge d’instruction to use the French term, the person responsible for carrying out a pre-trial investigation and preparing the evidence. During his trial, Charles heard the Judge state that he didn’t think the murder was premeditated, so he’s decided to write him a letter proving that it really was premeditated and that he knew exactly what he was doing when he committed the crime. It may seem an odd thing to want to prove, but Charles feels that it’s important to have his full story heard by someone.

In his letter, Alavoine begins by looking back at his early days when he qualified as a doctor and bought a practice in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon in western France. We then hear about his first wife, who died in childbirth, and the arrival of Armande, who came to take care of his young daughters and ended up marrying him. Armande is a practical, capable woman who quickly begins to dominate the household, the medical practice and every aspect of her husband’s life. Charles doesn’t love her but he needs a wife and she seems to be as good a choice as any. Things change when he meets a young woman, Martine, at a station and feels a desire for her that he has never felt for Armande. Charles is determined not to lose Martine now that he has found her, but events quickly begin to spiral out of control, leading to the crime for which he will later stand trial.

With the whole book written from Charles Alavoine’s perspective, this means we get right inside the mind of a killer, which makes this an intense, uncomfortable read. Alavoine has few, if any, redeeming qualities and is an unpleasant, abusive person from beginning to end. Apparently this was a deeply personal book for Simenon, who said “I wrote it in order to rid myself of my ghosts, not to commit the same deed carried out by my protagonist”. It seems that Simenon himself, like Alavoine, treated the women in his life badly, which is disappointing to know, although he at least had enough self-awareness to write an honest, reflective book like this one. It’s definitely a very disturbing story, though, even more so than the others I’ve read by him and I’m sure the autobiographical aspect is partly responsible for that.

As well as being an unsettling book to read, it’s also quite a gripping one. Although there’s not really any mystery as we already know the outcome of Alavoine’s story from the beginning, we don’t know what led him to that point so there’s still some suspense as we watch everything unfold. It’s not my favourite of the romans durs I’ve read so far, but it’s certainly a powerful novel and not one I’ll forget easily.

Thanks to Penguin Classics for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain – #ReadIndies

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Translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Megan Jones

I’ve been aware of Antoine Laurain’s books for years but this is the first one I’ve read. It was originally published in French in 2022 as Les caprices d’un astre and is now available in an English translation from Pushkin Press. I’m counting it towards this year’s Read Indies month, hosted by Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, which celebrates books published by independent publishers.

An Astronomer in Love is a dual timeline novel. One thread of the story is set in contemporary Paris, where divorced estate agent Xavier Lemercier has found an old telescope in a property he’s sold. He discovers that the telescope once belonged to the 18th century astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil, but he’s reluctant to give it to a museum and takes it home so he and his eleven-year-old son can use it to look at the night sky. Setting up the telescope on the terrace of his apartment, Xavier tests it out by looking at the nearby buildings – and is intrigued when he spots a woman on her balcony with what appears to be a zebra. Who is she and why would she have a zebra living in her apartment? Xavier is determined to find out!

In a second narrative which alternates with the first, we meet Guillaume Le Gentil as he sets out on a voyage to India in 1760, hoping to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. Unfortunately, due to delays and bad weather, he misses the transit and decides to stay in that part of the world until the next one eight years later. The novel describes his adventures during this period and the people and wildlife he encounters.

Guillaume Le Gentil is a real historical figure and the expedition covered in the novel really happened. It was fascinating to read about his visits to Madagascar, the Philippines, Pondicherry and the Isle de France (now Mauritius), and his observations of creatures such as flying fish, giant tortoises, ring-tailed lemurs, and even dodos, which would be considered extinct just a few years later. I think Guillaume’s story would have been interesting enough to fill a whole book on its own, but I felt that I didn’t get the chance to know him on a personal level as much as I would have liked, because we kept having to leave him behind to return to Xavier in the modern day.

Xavier’s timeline is linked to Guillaume’s in several ways, the telescope being just one of them. Sometimes a word, phrase or thought, or a sighting of a particular bird or animal will lead seamlessly from one narrative to the other. It’s difficult to explain what I mean, but it’s cleverly done and works well. Although, as I’ve said, I would have been happy to stay with the historical timeline all the way through, Xavier’s story was also entertaining, apart from a strange episode involving terrorism that felt out of place. There’s a romance for both main characters too – and Venus, of course, is the goddess of love, so there’s some symbolism there, with the transit of Venus playing an important part in both threads of the novel.

Antoine Laurain’s other books all sound intriguing and I liked this one enough to want to try another one. If you’ve read any of them, which would you recommend?

The Lily and the Lion by Maurice Druon #ParisinJuly2025

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Translated by Humphrey Hare

I always seem to forget about Paris in July, but this year I remembered in time and decided it would be the perfect opportunity to get back to Maurice Druon’s Accursed Kings series, which I started years ago and still haven’t finished! The Lily and the Lion (first published in French in 1959) is the sixth of seven books telling the story of Philip IV the Fair of France and the kings who follow him, said to have been cursed “to the thirteenth generation” by the vengeful Grand Master of the Knights Templar as he burned at the stake. Les Rois maudits, to give the series its French title, was very successful in France, being adapted for television twice, and has also been credited by George R.R. Martin as the inspiration for Game of Thrones.

The first book in the series is The Iron King and I would recommend starting there if possible. If you don’t have much knowledge of this period of French history (which I certainly didn’t), reading the books in order makes it easier to gradually understand the historical context and the relationships between the various characters. One character who has been with us since book one is Robert of Artois and his story becomes the main focus of book six.

The Lily and the Lion begins with the death of yet another French king, Charles IV. With no direct heir, his cousin Philippe of Valois is chosen as his successor, thanks largely to the machinations of Robert of Artois. In return for helping Philippe to the throne, Robert has been promised the new king’s support in reclaiming his lands of Artois which he believes have been stolen from him by his Aunt Mahaut. A large part of the book is devoted to the dispute over Artois, which is more exciting than it sounds as Robert is prepared to go to any lengths, including forgery, perjury and murder, to get what he wants – and Mahaut is equally determined to stop him.

In England, meanwhile, Philip the Fair’s daughter Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer, are now effectively ruling the country after deposing her husband, Edward II. However, Isabella and Edward’s son, the young Edward III, is almost old enough to take control of the throne himself and is planning to overthrow Mortimer. Thanks to some encouragement from Robert of Artois, who has lost patience with Philippe of Valois, Edward III also sets his sights on the throne of France, believing he has a claim through his mother. The seeds of the Hundred Years’ War have been sown!

For a long time, The Lily and the Lion was the last book in the series, until the publication of The King Without a Kingdom many years later in 1977. It does feel like a final book, as Druon ties up loose ends and brings his various storylines to a conclusion. I had wondered if he would return to the story of Marie de Cressay and Guccio Baglioni’s son, Jean, switched as a baby with John the Posthumous, the young King of France who supposedly died aged four days old – and he does, right at the end of the book in the epilogue. This felt very much like an afterthought, though, and I would have liked to have at least had some glimpses of Jean’s life in the main part of the novel.

Although I preferred the earlier books in the series, I did enjoy reading this one and seeing Robert and Mahaut’s long-running feud finally come to an end. I’ve heard that the final book is very different and not as good, but I’m sure I’ll read it eventually – maybe for next year’s Paris in July!

Book 12/20 for 20 Books of Summer 2025.

The Woman in the Wallpaper by Lora Jones

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The French Revolution is a fascinating subject and I’ve read several novels set during that period. The Woman in the Wallpaper, Lora Jones’ debut novel, is another and is written from the unusual perspective of two sisters working at a wallpaper factory in northern France.

Sofi and Lara Thibault are the daughters of a stonemason who dies suddenly under tragic circumstances early in the book. In need of work to support themselves, the sisters and their mother move to Jouy-en-Jouvant, a town near Paris, where all three have been offered employment at the Oberst factory. The factory produces wallpaper with a unique design featuring a woman thought to be the late Mrs Oberst, who died several years ago and may or may not have been murdered. As they settle into their new jobs, both girls are drawn to Josef Oberst, the heir to the factory, but Josef is soon to be a married man, with an aristocratic young wife due to arrive from Versailles.

With political turmoil brewing in France, Sofi finds herself caught up with the revolutionaries and longs to play a part in shaping her country’s future. Lara, however, has other things to worry about – like the resemblance between herself and Mrs Oberst and the way incidents from her own life seem to be replicated in the pictures on the factory wallpaper. Meanwhile, Josef’s new wife, Hortense, discovers that as a member of the aristocracy she could be in the most danger of them all as the revolution picks up pace.

I enjoyed The Woman in the Wallpaper, although I wish authors would stop writing in present tense! I’ve never read a book set in a wallpaper factory before and it was fascinating to read about the process of making the paper and preparing the coloured pigments, as well as the work carried out in the printhouse, where the designs are carved onto the wooden blocks which are then coated with ink and pressed onto the paper. The parts of the novel dealing with the French Revolution are also interesting. Some of the key events, such as the storming of the Bastille and the arrival of the guillotine, are included, but the main focus is on the role of women and how the Revolution seemed unlikely to bring about the level of change they were hoping for.

The novel is narrated by both of the Thibault sisters and at first, even though the name of the narrator is given at the start of each chapter, I found myself forgetting which one I was reading about as their voices felt very similar. Later in the book, as their stories began to diverge, the two became easier to distinguish and this wasn’t a problem anymore. Lara is the gentler, quieter, more mature sister but Sofi, the impetuous younger sister, was my favourite. However, there’s also a third narrator – Hortense, Josef’s selfish, entitled wife from Versailles. Hortense makes no attempt to adapt to the changes in society or to endear herself to the people of Jouy; in one memorable scene, she deliberately hosts an elaborate birthday party for her pet dog, knowing that peasants are starving and workers are protesting. I thought perhaps I would warm to her as the book went on, but that didn’t happen – I found her cruel and heartless right to the end.

As for the central mystery surrounding the images in the wallpaper and their connection with Lara’s life, I found it easy to guess what was really going on, but it was still quite unsettling! This is an impressive first novel and I hope Lora Jones will be writing more.

Thanks to Sphere for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

That Dark Spring by Susannah Stapleton

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One of my resolutions for 2025 was to read more non-fiction books, so I’m ashamed to say this is only my second one this year. Oh, well – I still have more than seven months to add a few more to that total. I would also like to widen the range of topics I normally choose to read about and try something different, but for now, with That Dark Spring, I have stayed within one of my usual areas for non-fiction – true crime.

The crime in question is the murder – or could it be suicide? – of Olive Branson, an Englishwoman in her forties found dead at her farmhouse in a village in Provence. This happens in April 1929, when she is discovered submerged in a water tank outside the house, a bullet wound between her eyes and a revolver nearby. The local policeman and doctor conclude that Olive shot herself, but not everyone is happy with this verdict. Back in England, Olive’s wealthy, influential cousin demands that the case be reopened, so one of France’s top detectives, Alexandre Guibbal, is summoned from Marseille to investigate.

It’s an intriguing mystery! Could Olive really have lifted the heavy cistern lid, lowered herself in and shot herself – with her left hand, despite evidence suggesting that she was right-handed? Guibbal doesn’t think so and quickly turns his attentions to François Pinet, believed to be a lover of Olive’s for whom she had changed her will to leave him the Monte Carlo Hotel, which she had recently purchased. As evidence mounts up against Pinet, he insists that he is innocent and is defended by many of the villagers who are keen to support ‘one of their own’. There’s eventually a trial, but even then a lot of questions are left unanswered. Susannah Stapleton can’t – and doesn’t – give us those answers, leaving us to draw our own conclusions and try to decide what really happened.

I enjoyed That Dark Spring overall, although it took me a while to get into it due to the amount of background information provided in the first half of the book: a history of the village of Les Baux and the Baussenc people; an account of Olive’s early life and her career as an artist; detailed descriptions of the two rival hotels in Les Baux; and a long and (as far as I could tell) irrelevant biography of the poet Frédéric Mistral. Some padding is to be expected in books of this type, of course, but I found that I only became fully engaged with the story when it returned to the central crime. There are some points that wouldn’t be out of place in a detective novel, such as where Guibbal consults an astronomer in an attempt to decide exactly when darkness fell on the night of the crime or where Pinet tries to use the sighting of a car as an alibi and becomes entangled in his own lies.

It’s frustrating that we still don’t know the truth behind Olive’s death and probably never will. If Pinet was innocent and we assume that suicide was unlikely, that must mean someone else got away with murder – but who was it? Stapleton doesn’t really steer us into one way of thinking or another; she just provides the facts and some possible theories for us to consider. She suggests that the police may have been so determined just to pin the blame on somebody that they ignored or failed to collect important evidence, leaving Pinet’s fate up to the lawyers and the jury.

Stapleton has drawn on a number of primary sources and includes excerpts from Olive Branson’s diaries and letters throughout the text, giving it a more personal touch. There are also notes at the end, a bibliography and a list of Olive’s exhibited artworks. I had never heard of Olive until now, so it’s good to have learned a little bit about her. I’ll have to go back and read Susannah Stapleton’s other book – The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective.

Thanks to Picador for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Midnight Carousel by Fiza Saeed McLynn

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Whenever you decide to read a book by an author who’s new to you, you never really know what to expect and there’s always a risk you won’t like it, particularly when it’s a debut novel like this one. Fortunately, I loved The Midnight Carousel from the beginning; it’s such an original, unusual story that I was completely captivated by it.

The carousel of the title is built in 1900 by Gilbert Cloutier for the Grand Exhibition in Paris. Gilbert is struggling to come to terms with his grief over the recent loss of his young son, so he decides to add some special features to the carousel in memory of the boy. This is the last thing he does before disappearing without trace. Over the years that follow, the carousel gains a sinister reputation when it becomes linked with further disappearances and Detective Laurent Bisset is asked to investigate. He thinks he has caught the culprit, but several years later history begins to repeat itself, leaving Laurent questioning whether he has made a terrible mistake.

Meanwhile, in England, Maisie Marlowe is being raised by abusive foster parents in Canvey Island, Essex. Maisie has no idea who her real parents are and the only things that sustain her through this miserable period of her life are her friendship with her foster brother and a picture of a beautiful carousel that she found on the beach. Eventually, an aunt comes to rescue her and takes her to live in the home of Sir Malcolm Randolph where she has just taken a job as housekeeper. Due to an unexpected sequence of events, Maisie ends up emigrating to America with Sir Malcolm where they open an amusement park in Chicago with a magnificent carousel as the star attraction – the exact same carousel as the one in Maisie’s picture and the same one that was built at Gilbert Cloutier’s factory in Paris.

When the disappearances begin again, Laurent Bisset is sure there must be a connection with the earlier incidents in France, so he travels to Chicago determined to uncover the truth this time. Here he crosses paths with Maisie, bringing the two threads of the novel together. I loved both characters and was interested in their personal stories – Maisie’s Dickensian childhood and her incredible change of fortune and Laurent’s dedication to making amends for his past mistakes – but I also enjoyed watching their relationship develop as they come together over the mystery of the carousel.

The mystery element of the book is not so much a whodunit as a howdunit. How can people be disappearing into thin air while riding the wooden jumping horses? Is the carousel itself haunted? Did Gilbert Cloutier place a curse on it? Is someone somehow snatching people from the horses without being seen? Although there were a few clues that I thought could and should have been noticed by Laurent and the police, I can also understand how they could have been missed. When we eventually get some answers, they are both clever and creepy and what I found particularly unsettling is that all through the book I never really knew whether I was reading magical realism or something with a more human explanation. The eerie atmosphere, along with the fairground setting, kept reminding me of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, but I think this is a better book.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Midnight Carousel and loved getting to know Laurent, Maisie and the secondary characters – I particularly liked Mrs Papadopoulos the dairy seller and Madame Rose the fortune-teller. I’ll certainly be putting Fiza Saeed McLynn on my list of authors to look out for in the future.

Thanks to Michael Joseph for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.