Waterstones Les Parisiennes
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Price: £10.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: Winner of the Franco-British Society Book Prize 2016. Echoes of the past continually resonate in modern-day France, because what happened here in the 1940s has left scars of such depth that many have not yet healed. June, 1940. German troops enter Paris and hoist the swastika over the Arc de Triomphe. The dark days of Occupation begin. How would you have survived? By collaborating with the Nazis, or risking the lives of you and your loved ones to resist? The women of Paris faced this dilemma every day - whether choosing between rations and the black market, or travelling on the Metro, where a German soldier had priority for a seat. Between the extremes of defiance and collusion was a vast moral grey area which all Parisiennes had to navigate in order to survive. Anne Sebba has sought out and interviewed scores of women, and brings us their unforgettable testimonies. Her fascinating cast includes both native Parisiennes and temporary residents: American women and Nazi wives; spies, mothers, mistresses, artists, fashion designers and aristocrats. The result is an enthralling account of life during the Second World War and in the years of recovery and recrimination that followed the Liberation of Paris in 1944. It is a story of fear, deprivation and secrets - and, as ever in the French capital, glamour and determination. ‘ To read this book is to admire female bravery and resilience, but also to understand why the scars left by the Second World War still run so deep.’ – The Times. A historian, lecturer, journalist and biographer, Anne Sebba’s award-winning books include That Woman, a biography of Wallis Simpson, and Les Parisiennes, an investigation into women’s lives in Paris during and immediately after the Second World War. Read more from the author about the unsung heroes of the Parisian resistance on the Waterstones blog.
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9781780226613
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9781780226613
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Author: Mrs. S. D. R.
Rating: 5
Review: Five stars here means "I loved it" but can you truthfully say you "loved" a book about such a disturbing history? My five stars are because Les Parisiennes is an extraordinary achievement. And the significant part of that is Anne Sebba's talent for conveying the wretchedness, fear and desperation endured by those who experienced France's Occupation; suffering and dying in those years. This well-known history in her hands becomes somehow more immediate and intimate; and she gives enormous breadth to it. Most histories on this subject have focussed on individuals rather than offered a universal view of those years. The book can seem a bit confusing because Ms Sebba performs a juggler's task of keeping a lot of different balls spinning in the air sequentially; incorporating so many names and different strands of their individual stories is not an easy thing to do, and I found myself constantly referring back to the index so I was able to follow the stories of various individuals . People drop in and out all the way through the history she's relating. This is something she handles very well and is undoubtedly the only way to write this type of book which draws in so many by name; heroes and anti-heroes and deals with what happened to who, when. She encompasses an enormous number of people from most if not all sides of the conflict. It's a feat to have constructed a narrative of this type. Ms Sebba gives us Paris with all it's charms - its fashions, its chic and vivid social whirl of aristocracy, artists and politics, contrasting that Parisian carousel against a backdrop of mounting deprivation, ever-present fear of betrayal, and death. She presents the female dilemma of trying to survive when the main breadwinner has been removed from the household and there are mouths to be fed and backs to be clothed; a city whose men have been forced to leave - to fight against or labour with the Germans. You see the curious blindness of the collaborators and the Nazis themselves who with later nostalgia recall their occupation of Paris as a wonderful period; enjoying themselves by indulging in the Parisian fleshpots and accessing the extravagant shopping available to few others. Seemingly entirely numb to the suffering they had imposed upon the French nation. You see Vichy supporters, blindly going about their business; defiantly going along with the status-quo in order to sustain the good life of food and wine, glamorous clothes and a high standard of living. This is set against the extraordinary heroism of and risks run by the Resistance who doggedly continued to undermine Vichy and the Nazis to the very last day of the conflict. The women of the Resistance acted at times, with cavalier defiance; hiding British airmen beneath the noses of Nazis, and guns beneath a baby lying in its pram; tucking military hardware into clothing and cycling along with grenades etc... One other thing that struck me was how a country where betrayals with deadly consequences had been a fact of daily life, got itself back together after the war. I can't help thinking that the contrast between the rightful pride and glory of the Resistance and the eternal stain of the collaboration and the betrayals have left their traces in the nation's soul. What I found most distressing were the individual stories of women in labour camps like Ravensbruick or Auschwitz for whom the reprieve of Liberation came barely a week or so too late. These women had struggled for so long to remain alive in conditions too awful to contemplate – forced to unload coal or dig rocks out of frozen ground with almost no clothes or food in sub-zero temperatures, tortured and mistreated. How could that small scrap of extra life not have been granted to them – when freedom lay such a little way ahead? The war seems far distant now; and yet it still throws up the questions we don't want to know the answers to: how could so many have behaved with such cruelty? How could such evil have gained a grip on what was thought to be a civilised continent? And then comes the biggest question of all – would I have had the courage to stand against such things?
Author: Geoff Bonner
Rating: 1
Review: If you’re thinking of buying this book in order to get a balanced analysis of what life was like for the women of Paris during the German occupation, think again. Firstly, there is very little analysis in it – it’s basically a collection of reminiscences, with little to tie them together apart from a rough timeline, and occasional summary paragraphs explaining what the broader situation of the war was at various times. There is no significant attempt to analyse whether these reminiscences stand up to scrutiny, whether there are common patterns of behaviour, whether other people might have taken a different view of what is being said, or whatever. Secondly, the reminiscences are almost exclusively those of “elite” women – aristocrats, wealthy women, actresses, writers, musicians, society hostesses, people who were friends with highly placed German officers, and so on. At times it reads like the gossip column of a society magazine. Some of the struggles described are of how difficult it was to move back and forward between one’s house in Paris and the one on the Riviera, of trying to prevent the Germans confiscating one’s art collection, of managing to ride one’s horse when one wanted. You won’t find many accounts of what life was like for factory workers, housewives, clerks, government employees, teachers, and so on – ordinary people don’t get much of a look in. If you weren't rich or influential, you obviously didn't count as a Parisienne. Thirdly, you would think from reading the book that almost every woman in Paris at the time was either hiding from the Germans or engaged in some form of active resistance to them – the vast majority of the stories told are from one of these two groups. Occasional reference is made to a much smaller group of active collaborators (very few of whom seem to have been women), and to vaguely defined and anonymous “informers”. The reality of course is that the vast majority of Parisiennes tried not to take sides, to keep their heads down and get on with their own lives, for most of the occupation. The book largely ignores them. It is of course this last group – the attentistes - that is perhaps the most interesting. I am intrigued by how ordinary people – such as you and I – coped with everyday life, the moral choices and balances they had to make, during this period of exceptional stress, and I bought the book hoping it would tell me something about that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. So the book is actually about what a tiny minority of rich women would like you to believe now about what their lives were like at the time, and how they helped to win the war. Best avoided.
