The London House by Katherine Reay

In the prologue to The London House by Katherine Reay, it's the 1940s in Occupied France. A woman named Caro has gone to the House of Schiaparelli to give her Jewish friend money and encourage her to escape the country before it's too late. But, then a dangerous traitor shows up and grabs Caro. He's going to turn her over to the French police, the Milice, who are known to be even more brutal than the Germans. 

In present-day Boston, Caroline Payne (great niece of Caro in the prologue) is working when she gets a call from an old college friend, Mat. Now a college instructor working toward tenure, he has developed a side business that he hopes will get him onto tenure track, researching family histories and writing about how history sends ripples through families. He's in Caroline's building and wants to talk to her because her family came up while he was researching a German family whose Nazi ancestor was connected to the disappearance of Great Aunt Caro, whom Caroline is named after and has always been told died at the age of 7 from polio. 

Mat has a different story to tell and the documentation to prove it, a letter by a British dignitary who informed her great-grandparents that Caro ran off with her Nazi lover. Mat has already approached her father to tell him that the story will include her family but it's not meant to be incriminating; it's about how the pain of the past reverberates through the generations and how people move on with their lives after tragedy. Caroline's father has threatened him with a lawsuit. 

Caroline has a great deal of difficulty adjusting to the idea that her great aunt lived to adulthood. But, once she does, she decides to visit the family's ancestral home in London's Belgravia, where there are letters and diaries that can give her clues. She only has a limited amount of time to get the research done before Mat's article is submitted and she's also on a tight schedule to return to her job. 

Did Caroline's great aunt, her grandmother's twin sister, betray the family and her country? Or, is there more to Caro's story? Will Caroline be able to untangle the clues from the past that will lead her toward the truth?

Highly recommended - I loved The London House. The story is a very believable one because some things about WWII simply could not be known till recently and it makes sense that one may have had to know where to find clues — and couldn't necessarily find answers in any official sense. I loved the way Caroline slowly uncovered her great aunt's story, the Nazi lover's (in the process), and in so doing changed the direction of both her friend's article and her family's understanding of their history. Also, there is a touch of romance and it unfolded slowly and believably. 

My only problem with this book is an issue a lot of Americans probably won't have. The writing and dialogue by British characters doesn't contain any particular use of Britishisms and lacks a British cadence. So, everyone sounded American to me. I think that's an extremely minor issue because the story swept me up so thoroughly that I didn't really give the dialogue much thought. However, it did eventually jump out at me. I still highly recommend The London House, even if you've been to the UK a bazillion times. It's a good story and I found it nearly impossible to put down. 

My thanks to Harper Muse, Katherine Reay, and Laurel Ann of Austenprose for the review copy!

Interesting side note:

Goodreads has some additional description that I found interesting (I opted not to read the publisher's description but saw this when I went to rate the book):

A stand-alone split-time novel
Partially epistolary: the historical storyline is told through letters and journals

"Stand-alone split-time" is a new descriptor for me. I usually call the split-time books a "contemporary historical mix". Also, the fact that much of the book is told through letters and diary entries is crucial, so I'm glad I glimpsed that for the reminder. Now you know. If you're an epistolary fan, you'll undoubtedly enjoy the way this story is told. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Mini Reviews: Paris in Love by Eloisa James and More Like Her by Liza Palmer

I don't have a great deal to say about either of these books, although I enjoyed them both for very different reasons. So . . . mini review time!

More Like Her by Liza Palmer is a very strange book. A glance at the cover screams "chick lit" and it does read like chick lit, stylistically. But, the prologue is actually a 911 call made during a school shooting. So, as you begin the reading of this remarkably chick-littish book about friendship between women and love angst, you know there will be a dramatic turning point and the story will be about friends helping each other survive post-traumatic stress, not just about everyday life and love.

The first 100 pages or so of More Like Her are about the friendship between three women and the slight envy they have for Emma Dunham. All work at the same exclusive private school where Emma has become the new headmistress. Frances has recently been dumped by her boyfriend, Jill is happily married and determined to find someone perfect for Frannie, and Lisa has been too career-focused to devote much time or thought to men. When a team of architects from Tennessee arrive to work on the school's expansion project, Lisa falls spectacularly in love with one of the architects and Frances falls for, and is dangled by, another. All three couples are present at the shooting.

Thanks to the prologue and the fact that I loved the friendship between the women, I read More Like Her rabidly. It was one of those rare books that I finished in a day. While I did tire of the sex talk and the heroine's angst (and found it a bit of a stretch that there was more than one architect always on-site at the school's expansion project), the dialogue is tremendously fun. Once the women have survived the shooting, the way Frannie keeps reliving things in her head . . . well, let's just say it's a good idea to keep the tissue box handy. And, yet there is always plenty of levity to break the mood between darker scenes. More Like Her may be a little strange because it's such an odd blend of love, friendship and tragedy but it's definitely a compelling and deeply emotional read and recommended. The storyline is a bit transparent/predictable, especially at the end, but that didn't bother me. I'm just not certain who to recommend it to -- probably lovers of women's fiction because it's the growing friendship between three women that is most appealing about the book.

Paris in Love by Eloisa James is a memoir by romance novelist James about her family's year in Paris. After recovering from breast cancer, James (whose real name is Mary Bly) went on a mad purging frenzy, throwing out and selling things she would not have parted with, pre-cancer. With a new determination to fulfill her dreams she sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor and moved her family to Paris.

Paris in Love is not told in the typical memoir format but in anecdotes and essays. Many of her anecdotes were Facebook posts, so they're very brief but incredibly entertaining little vignettes about such topics as her children (particularly in regard to their adjustment from American schooling to an Italian school in France), experimentation in the kitchen, visits to museums, a family trip to London, restaurant and other food experiences, and her mother-in-law's hilarious reports about the health of their obese dog (who lived with her in Florence, Italy).

I marked up Paris in Love with about a million Post-its. When I went back to see if there was anything quotable, I found that I did mark a few entertaining tales. But, mostly, I marked the anecdotes that mentioned interesting things to see and do in Paris. At the end of the book, there is a section entitled, "My Very Unofficial Guide to a Few Places in Paris," which details some of James/Bly's favorite museums, places to shop, restaurants, etc. So, I probably could have dispensed with most of the Post-its, but that brings home the point that the book is worth a read if you happen to be planning a trip to Paris. I'm not, although just in case . . . I'm hanging onto my ARC.

My favorite anecdotes were the stories about the author's children and the dog. They truly made me laugh out loud. I recommend Paris in Love to memoir lovers and people who love reading about Paris or who dream of one day visiting. Because the book is written as a series of anecdotes with a few essays tossed in, it's a good book to keep with you when you know you'll only be able to read in quick bites (short train hops, sitting in line to pick up children from school, etc.).

Since there's red in both book covers, today you get a rose:

Tomorrow, who knows?

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Time Was Soft There by Jeremy Mercer

Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer is a memoir I've been hearing about for years. I came across my copy (acquired via Paperback Swap but promptly set aside) whilst deep cleaning and eagerly dived into the reading.

For those who aren't familiar with the store: Shakespeare & Co. is a Paris bookstore, famously known not only for its books but also for housing a rotating community of scruffy, soup-eating hopeful authors. Mercer stayed at the store while attempting to figure out what to do with his life.

After giving up his crime-reporting job due to a death threat, the author traveled to Paris but he ate through his savings rapidly. His memoir tells about fleeing his Canadian hometown in fear, his early days in Paris, time at Shakespeare & Co., and the literary magazine he and another resident eventually began to publish, Kilometer Zero.

Although Time Was Soft There is a memoir, it's not merely about the author's experience. Mercer also describes Shakespeare & Company's history and owner George Whitman's life. Whitman has since passed away (but he apparently lived to 98 -- maybe there's something to just living with the dirt, rather than trying to keep everything squeaky clean). The store lives on.

Although I was too busy to read much, Time Was Soft There went with me to Nashville during our Christmas holiday, along with several other books, and was the only book I bothered to continue reading when I had a spare moment. During those spare moments, I read a bit on the "rabidly" side.

I'm not quite sure what exactly I expected -- certainly not the mention of insect life, but perhaps the grubbiness of the store's residents -- however, in many ways the book was far better than anticipated. I loved the fact that Time Was Soft There is part memoir, part bio of the store's owner, part history. Memoirs run the gamut from humble to self-aggrandizing and Time Was Soft There strikes a nice balance.

Addendum: I'd completely forgotten that I read an excerpt from Time Was Soft There in Paris Was Ours (<---link to my review), which I read early in 2011. Thanks to editor Penelope Rowlands for the reminder. That particular excerpt was one of my favorites; no wonder I went into the reading with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Recommended to memoir-loving book fiends.

On a related note, we watched Midnight in Paris, two nights ago. The entire time we were watching, I kept hoping Shakespeare & Co. would show up. Sure enough, there was a brief image. Too brief, really, but I made a little noise of excitement when the bookstore finally made an appearance. Husband was baffled. What, pray tell, was so exciting about that extremely minimal view of the bookstore? he asked (my wording). "I just read about it," I said. "Oh." Shrug. There's really no accounting for crazy book people, I suppose.

In case you're interested, Kiddo and I loved the movie (about a writer who is transported to the Twenties, where he hangs out with the expat artistic crowd gathered in Paris), even though there's no escaping the usual feel of a Woody Allen movie. I thought Owen Wilson did a spectacular job of portraying a Woody Allen role without the usual stiffness and odd gestures that make Allen's movies come across looking so staged. I do like a few Woody Allen films, just not many. Midnight in Paris is loads of fun for the literary-adoration crowd. We laughed a lot, Kiddo and I. Husband left the room. He said it was way too "typical Woody Allen" for his taste.

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.