The Paris Library
By Janet Charles
Rating 3/5
Genres : Historical Fiction, World War 2, Romance
This story is based on a set of true events that happened in Paris during the World War 2. A bunch of librarians risked everything to provide literary support to subscribers and prisoners/patients of war by delivering books to cheer them up and keep them in high spirits. Some of them got booted for aiding jewish readers, some were sent packing back to their homelands but the group's indomitable resolve to do their part kept them afloat till the very end .. when the war is finally over and German occupancy of Paris came to an end.
Its a great idea in theory but I felt that the execution/narrative failed to really stir any hard emotions for me. Perhaps because the World/Paris where war was under progress, where people are suffering and getting sent to concentration camps and the World/Paris where the librarians were cheerfully carrying on their book deliveries, politics, romantic alliances seemed dissociated from one another to me. Like the both worlds are worlds apart. One didn't converge with the other.
While the characterization of the main character Odile might call for a Nicole Kidman like intensity, the screenplay would require a bubbly and fiesty Reese Witherspoon to play the role. I didn't really understand why or what makes the character of Odile 'special' or be tagged 'protagonist'. She didn't seem to age much or at all between 1940s and 1980s .. was she exceptionally matured in her teens or retained teen like nature in her old days? I know I can be scathingly critical but I had these genuine doubts reading the story.
I felt the fear / apprehension only towards the end of the war about what could happen to her friend Margaret at the hands of her brute husband Paul who until that point was such a devoted symbol of kindness and sweetness. He had no symptoms of sadism/mania that would have made a person commit the horror he did to a single mother on the streets of Paris .. and for what silly reason?
The track of Lily felt completely redundant .. Odile sets up her later life in America and Lily is her neighbor who is interested to make a report on her life. She has remained a recluse for a long time and now befriends Lily and based on her life, gives her lot of philosophical advice. Again, she is no different in thinking or behavior than her other self back in 1940s. Lol.
An other book I read this year which covered the same period of World War 2 and Paris is 'All The Light We Cannot See' and I am amazed at how strikingly fresh most of the images are in my mind and how starkly clear/genuine the main characters appeared to be. In this book..if anything,a character's description and their actions don't have much correlation..like Odile herself and Boris the librarian, Bitsi her friend .. and Mrs. Reeder seems to fit a trope role than be an actual person.
Well, an underwhelming read. On the whole.
Still one can read once to get an appreciation for the efforts of the librarians, the mindsets of parisians of 1940s, how there were crow letters targeting jews, how cruel mobs could be towards their own kind post war etc.
Cheers! 🥂
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