After the darkness of war, the light of books: The story of some bad ass librarians

I love that The Paris library showcases the bravery of the librarians at the American Library in Paris during the Nazi occupation of WW2. It is not often that lovers of books are portrayed with heroism! The book is based on true events and that made me love it even more.

The Paris library | Published February 2021 | Read November 2023

The author, herself having spent time working in the American Library, weaves well-researched fact and fiction into a story of the librarians who fought to keep the library open (and the books protected) during the Occupation in Paris in World War 2. Their quiet resistance was not only in keeping the library open. The librarians organised the delivery of books to active and captured soldiers in internment camps, and smuggled books to Jewish subscribers in Paris long after they were banned from public life. The brave librarians (not a sentence you see much!) also fought to protect one another and their patrons, those with Jewish heritage or deemed enemy aliens as a result of the war. Losing books or access to them may seem to pale into insignificance in the face of the genocide committed by the Nazi regime. The librarians' acts of resistance may also seem insignificant. It was clear from reading The Paris library, however, that to be denied books means a loss of culture, of ideas, of people's identities, and of freedom and democracy.

The novel jumps between Odile Souchet's story as one of the librarians in Paris during the war and her later years in a small town in Montana in the mid 1980s, where she meets a lonely teenage neighbour, Lily. Their friendship gives the reader the chance to journey into Odile's past. Lily learns to love France and its language through her regular interactions with Odile.

The central themes of the book - courage, friendship, disappointment, loss, betrayal, hope, choices, and consequences - are set against the backdrop of both Odile and Lily's stories. I found Odile's story the most compelling and I could quite easily have read a whole novel on her life during the war and that of the heroic librarians. In a similar vein to The German wife by Kelly Rimmer, Lily's story seems somewhat superfluous. I think that the author's intention is to draw parallels between the women's stories, although played out in very different contexts, and for Odile to teach Lily some valuable life lessons. I just didn't feel the connections between the two women's stories as strongly as is perhaps intended.

I would also have liked more of Odile's post-war experiences, as the reader is only given glimpses into her life in the US as a war bride, whose husband has passed away by the time Lily enters her life. The ending is a bit rushed, too, without the benefit of more exploration of the final days of the war and Odile's post-war life.

At times, 20-year-old Odile came across as naïve and immature, her personal concerns trivial in the face of the horrors and deprivations of the Nazi occupation of Paris. There is romance sprinkled with the realities of life under the Nazi regime and a sense that Odile and her family, friends and colleagues were unaware of what was happening to France's Jewish population. They were not without their own losses, but the important themes in the book could have been emphasised more with less romance and more of life during the Occupation.

My four-star rating is for the bad ass librarians and the parts of the novel that describe Odile's life in Paris, not for the modern story. Oh, and make sure you read the author's notes in the epilogue as they provide fascinating insight into the real people and events in the novel.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐