The Paris Library
The Paris Library
By: Janet Skeslien Charles
[Fulfilling “A book with a place in the title” as part of the 2021 Fall Reading Challenge.]
“Libraries are lungs. Books the fresh air breathed in to keep the heart beating, to keep the brain imagining, to keep hope alive.”
“Words are worth fighting for, they are worth the risk.”
What great quotes!
Unfortunately, the book didn’t live up to my expectations for this one.
This is your classic historical fiction that jumps back and forth from past (1940s) and the present (1980s). It follows the life of Odile Souchet in Paris as a young librarian at The American Library, and then as an older woman living in rural Montana, befriending the teenager girl next door, Lily.
Almost all the characters (not Odile or Lily) are based on real life people working at this library in Paris during the Nazi occupation in WWII.
If you are a book-lover, especially of classic literature, this book will probably hold a special place in your heart because you understand the importance of books for the mind and the soul and all the quotes from the books will be familiar. (Also Odile memorized the Dewey Decimal System and frequently processes life through this categorization which is actually a pretty cool thing to include in the book.)
There were several bookish things that I really liked, but overall this book was a bit boring for me. Pretty much just day-to-day activities with some drama.
The book summary includes this teaser: “Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books.”
I was anticipating a little more danger. Maybe they were passing messages with the books. Maybe they were hiding Jews in the library.
But ‘joining the Resistance’ is a bit of an exaggerated phrase. What this means in the book is that Jews were no longer allowed in the library or access to their books, and so the librarians secretly delivered books to them.
But no one ever really gets caught. A few people get sent to internment camps, but they return home at the end of the war. And even as the quote above talks about keeping hope alive, I didn’t feel like the author really got to the heart of books and words as hope or even as a weapon. I didn’t feel the tension, the danger, the risk, and I didn’t feel the hope, the power, or the endurance.
I definitely respect and admire their courage to keep books in the hands of their subscribers, but because I didn’t see that hope blossom for those subscribers, and I didn’t really see the influence of the library at that time, the story feels a bit bland compared to other WWII historical fiction out there.
The focus was on Odile and her relationships with the people around her. It’s like the author just tacked on the Paris library’s historical existence and real librarians into the story so she could call it historical fiction.
I would have rather her focused on the historical figures than the fictionalized Odile and Lily.
Boris the librarian— meaning “part psychologist, bartender, bouncer, and detective.”
Miss Reeder who said, “You’re nothing without principles. Nowhere without ideals. No one without courage.”
But instead we get a lot of Odile, the “prickly librarian” who is determined to work and earn money so “when the inevitable happened” (her future husband leaving her or cheating on her) she “could save herself.” But her careless words get her into trouble more than once. And her selfishness throughout the book is unlikable.
And we have Lily, who, since her mother recently died, is desperate for love and attention and not from her new stepmom. She becomes fascinated with Odile and obsessed with the French language. They become best friends. But Lily, like Odile, gets herself in trouble with her selfishness and careless words and hurts the people around her.
Odile regrets the mistakes she made in Paris and views mentoring Lily as a way to atone and correct them vicariously through Lily— advising her on all matters of family, friendship, and love, and the dangers of jealousy and resentment.
Some other things that took away from the book for me:
Lily’s obsession with all things French. Sure the reader learns French words along the way, and maybe this obsession is on par with how youths would respond, but I found it mostly pretentious and annoying. She often wielded it as a weapon and saw it as a way to fashion her identity instead of just appreciating it for what it was.
There’s a part where Lily is working as a maid at a motel where men come in from out of state and stay while they help cut down trees, and one comes up to her and tells her she’s really pretty and then helps her carry her vacuum and then kisses her on the lips and then leaves. Like what? That’s gross and highly inappropriate! But she’s totally fine with it, in fact, swooning over it. You can’t just do that people… I’m pretty sure this is some form of sexual harassment!
The author includes a comment Lily makes about Sartre and Beauvoir finding each other as if this is her idea of romance she pines for. It’s interesting because there seems to be an emphasis on the infidelity of males in the 1940s that leave women stranded. Yet Sartre and Beauvoir are not the picture of committed lifelong love. They specifically had an open relationship meant to be “empowering” because they both slept around but Beauvoir would rather have had Sartre to herself and in the end Sartre cuts her out of his will and leaves everything to his last mistress. So good luck with that, Lily. [If you’re interested in more about Sartre and Beauvoir in terms of feminism, check out Radical Womanhood.]
Odile’s impulsivity is super annoying. She has no regard for what her words and actions do to other people. Even in the terrible aftermath of the ‘betrayal’ the book summary alludes to, she doesn’t learn from her mistakes. Throughout the book we have the mystery of why she married Buck if she was in love with Paul and why she ended up in Montana and won’t go back to Paris. Without giving too much away, I’ll just say it’s because she couldn’t face the consequences and ran away with no regard for the people she left behind.
Other reviewers have mentioned this too, but there is this elusive “Lucienne” character that is frequently brought up as a friend Odile hasn’t seen in awhile and needs to visit. And we never do find out anything about her. What seemed significant turns out to be either a loose end the author forgot to do anything with or just something hyped up and random that actually meant nothing. Either answer is unsatisfying.
IN SUMMATION:
A lot of people liked this book, and the premise was intriguing. But I’ve read a lot of historical fiction, and WWII historical fiction in particular, and this just doesn’t rank that high for me. There are others I’d recommend before this.
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