Review of The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Harmel, Kristin.  The Book of Lost Names.  Gallery Books, 2020.

 

In 1942, while babysitting a neighbor’s children, Eva Traube secretly sees her father, who is a Polish Jew, arrested when the Nazis begin picking up the Jews in Paris.  Realizing the danger, she and her mother flee to Aurignon, a city in the Free Zone of southern France, while Eva works on a plan to free her father.   Instead, Eva becomes part of the French Resistance of World War II, working with a covert forging group that creates documents to help Jewish children escape across the French border to Switzerland.  The forging ring is run in the library of the Eglise Saint-Alban Church and is headed by Pere’ Clement, a Catholic priest.  Nearly the whole town is involved in the underground forging ring, and many of them have an alias just in case they are caught.

 

Eva is trained by another forger, Remy, and they decide that the children who are taken across the border need to be remembered by their real names.  They begin encoding the children’s names and aliases in a rare book, Epitres et Evangiles.  Eventually, Remy and Eva fall in love, and Remy begins bringing children across the border instead of forging documents.  The Nazis finally learn of their secret operation, and the pair flees Aurignon, escorting children into Switzerland.  In the process, Remy and Eva part ways.

 

Years later, in 2005, Eva Abrams, now widowed, is working as a part-time librarian at the public library in Winter Park, Florida.  She notices a New York Times newspaper article about a man named Otto Kuhn, a librarian who lives in Berlin.  His life’s mission is to return a million books looted from libraries by the Nazis, to their rightful Jewish owners.  In the article, she sees her book, Eptres et Evangiles, and knows she must travel to Berlin to obtain the book.  She hopes that Remy has left a coded message for her in the book and wants closure from World War II, which took so much from her and her family.

 

In The Book of Lost Names, Kristin Harmel has combined World War II history and the French Resistance with romance, suspense, and mystery.  The story is compelling, hopeful, and filled with hope and perseverance.  It is an honest portrayal of what people’s lives are like when their freedoms are taken away.  It is evident that the author did meticulous research on the forging rings and the libraries that were looted during World War II.

 

Not just Eva, but all the female characters, including the boarding house owner and other townspeople, are portrayed as strong and courageous.  It is heartwarming and astonishing to see how a whole Catholic town works together to benefit hundreds of innocent Jewish children.

 

This novel received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.  Hand it to readers who enjoy historical fiction and to fans of World War II stories.  I highly recommend it for public libraries and give it five out of five fleur de lis!

 

Thank you to Edelweiss and Gallery Books for allowing me to read and review this book.

Review of The Art Collector's Daughter: A Stylish Historical Thriller by Derville Murphy

Murphy, Derville.  The Art Collector's Daughter: A Stylish Historical Thriller. Poolbeg Press, 2020.

During the 1940's Paul Vasseur is the owner of an art gallery in Paris.  His personal collection of fine art includes paintings by Picasso, Braque, Rousseau, and others.  Before the Germans can lock down Paris, Paul and his wife, Hanna, secretly send their young daughter, Sylvie, to live with Paul's friend, Daniel Courtney, and his family in Ireland.  Paul and Hanna try in vain to escape to safety, but they are caught and sent to a German concentration camp.

Sylvie grows up with Daniel’s sons, Nicholas and Peter, and Daniel’s wife, Nora.  She longs to go to college and study art, but is not allowed to do so.  Instead, Daniel says there are no funds for art school and enrolls Sylvie in secretarial courses, which she dislikes intensely.  Unfortunately, she  becomes pregnant, and her unborn child’s father does not offer to marry her.  She marries a close friend, and life is terribly hard for the threesome.

 

Sometime later, Sylvie befriends Jennifer and Maxwell Ambrose, and this couple nurtures her as a young artist and helps her art career along.  She is just beginning to enjoy both her personal and professional life when she dies suddenly in a drowning accident.

 

In the 1980s, Nicholas Courtney hires Claire Howard, a young art historian, to catalog Sylvie’s works of art.  He also employs his nephew, Sam, to help Claire.  While Claire discovers just how talented Sylvie was, she also uncovers family secrets that will put her life in grave danger.

 

In this debut novel by Derville Murphy, the author has written a compelling novel about the art world during and after World War II.  The novel is written in alternating time periods, moving between the war, the 1960s, and the 1980s and between the places of Paris and Ireland.  There are luxurious descriptions of the countryside in Ireland and bustling scenes of Paris.

 

Although the novel is billed as a “historical thriller”, it does not read like a thriller.  It feels more to like a historical mystery, instead.  The action is well-paced, and there are a few surprising moments.  Some of the dialogue between the characters seems stilted and forced and goes on far too long in places.  I would have liked to know more about Paul and Hanna lives and Paul’s relationships with the artists he dealt with.  The plot contains some heavy themes—mental illness, womanizing, abuse, and death, among others, which are worked deftly into the story. 

 

Is it easy to see how the author has drawn on her experiences as an art consultant and artist in writing her first novel.  Hand The Art Collector’s Daughter to art lovers and readers who enjoy mysteries and historical fiction.  I recommend it for public libraries and give it four out of five fleur de lis!

 

Thank you to Book Sirens and Poolbeg Press for allowing me to read and review this book.