The Game of Hope by Sandra Gulland

Fifteen-year-old Hortense Beauharnais is a survivor of the French Revolution. It is 1798, four years after the Reign of Terror ended with the beheading of its architect, Robespierre. Hortense's father, Alexandre was guillotined days before the end, but her mother barely survived, due to be executed the next day. After the murder of her father, twelve-year-old Hortense was sent to the Institute, an all-girls school run by Maitresse Campan and located in a chateau that used to belong to a wealthy family in Montagne-du-Bon-Air. Hortense's mother, Rose, now called Josephine, is re-married to General Napoleon Bonaparte who is with the French army in Egypt, as is her older brother Eugene.

Also attending the boarding school are her cousin Emilie and Maitresse Campan's niece, Adele Auguie who is nicknamed Mouse. Emilie attends the school because she has no family to care for her; her father fled during the Reign of Terror and her mother was imprisoned but is now married to her former prison guard. Emilie is newly married to Captain Antoine Lavalette, an arranged marriage to an officer in Napoleon's army in Egypt. Almost every girl in the boarding school is from the aristocracy and has terrible memories of the revolution.

Hortense has just recently returned to the school after spending three months caring for her injured mother. The story opens with Hortense suffering from a yet another nightmare of her father approaching and reaching out for her, his body headless. Her school mates believe that Hortense has seen a ghost.

As a "Multi", that is an older girl who wears a multi-coloured sash, Hortense is responsible for helping the younger girls who are divided into levels by colour. She helps them get up and get dressed in the morning, get to the dining hall and to learn proper etiquette. Her charge is 4-year-old Nelly.

One of the Multis is Bonaparte's sister, Annunziata who like the rest of the family, has changed her name, calling herself Caroline. She has been late at least five times, so Citoyenne Florentine who is the night monitor, assigns her to the Table of Repentance. Maitresse Campan takes time to speak to Hortense, concerned about her recurring nightmare of her father and telling her she once met her father and saw him dance with the Queen. Maitresse also informs Hortense that she will be taking music lessons from the new music instructor, Citoyen Hyacinthe Jadin, who also teaches at the Conservatory in Paris.

Hortense's mother Josephine returns to Paris and has her daughter accompany her to a "civic celebration of Bonaparte's victorious Battle of the Pyramids and his triumphant entry into Cairo"  Hortense is concerned for her mother who seems deeply upset but who won't let on what is troubling her.  However, when Hortense returns to the school she learns from Eliza that the entire French fleet has been sunk by the British - all thirteen ships and that they now control the Mediterranean.

Out of concern for her brother Eugene, Hortense continues writing him letters which she does not mail. In these letters she also mentions her concern for Major Christophe Duroc whom she is infatuated with.

Hortense Beauharnais

Then terrible rumours circulate that Napoleon has been assassinated by an Arab. However, they soon learn that this is not true, but that Eugene was injured. In the summer of 1799, Hortense returns to her mother's home, Malmaison. Hortense questions Emilie about her father because Caroline has hinted that he is not really her father. Emilie reveals to Hortense the difficult situation between her parents and their separation but does tell her that in the end her father acknowledged that she was his daughter. Unfortunately, the two girls quarrel when Hortense tells Emilie that her affections as a married woman for Louis Bonaparte are wrong. During the summer Emilie is stricken with small pox and although she recovers, her face is badly scarred.

Hortense, Emilie, and Caroline return to the Institute but soon after Hortense becomes ill and is forced to return to her mother in Paris. Meanwhile Josephine attempts to convince the Directors to send a fleet to rescue Bonaparte, but they refuse. Then she learns that Bonaparte and Eugene have managed to travel to the port in the south of France. Determined to meet her husband before his family, Josephine along with Hortense travel to the south of France but they miss Bonaparte. Instead they journey back to Paris to find Bonaparte already there and refusing to see Josephine. Eventually it is Hortense and Eugene who convince him to see her and they reconcile. Josephine's home becomes Napoleon's base with many soldiers coming and going. This results in Hortense seeing Eugene's fellow aide-de-camp, Colonel Christophe Duroc.

Napoleon survives a coup and the Directors running the government are disbanded. A three person Consulate is formed that consists of Napoleon Bonaparte and two previous directors. Napoleon moves Josephine and her family into the Petit Luxembourg. They do not know it yet but this is beginning of Napoleon's rise to rule France. For Hortense. it marks the beginning of her life in French society with many opportunities to meet Christophe Duroc. Soon enough she will be pulled into the political intrigue of Napoleonic France.

Discussion

The Game of Hope was authored by Sandra Gulland who has written extensively on Hortense's mother, Josephine Beauharnais Bonaparte. She was asked to write a YA biography on Josephine's daughter, Hortense but Gulland was curious to know if Hortense's life would be interesting enough to write about and she learned that it was. To that end, Gulland has crafted a fascinating account of Hortense Beauharnais's life and a revealing account of life in France in the years immediately after the Reign of Terror and during the rise of Napoleon. Not only do young readers learn about Hortense but also about her mother Josephine, the rapidly changing political scene in France during the period immediately following the Reign of Terror and Napoleon's rapid rise to power.

Gulland had to pick and choose what she was going to include in her story. For example she states in her Afterword that in real life there were many more relatives and friends than could be reasonably included in the story. Families in Catholic France were much larger and many well-to-do families had servants. To keep the number of characters manageable, many were left out of the novel.

The Game of Hope portrays a France struggling to come to terms with the horrors of the Reign of Terror. Hortense has recurrent nightmares of her father's execution. While Hortense is aware that her mother escaped being guillotined by only a day, her cousin Emilie's mother - Hortense's aunt was not so lucky. She jumped to her death the day before Robespierre was executed, so as to save her daughter from being impoverished. Convents are empty because all the nuns have been executed. 

Gulland has crafted a believable portrayal of Hortense Beauharnais, a young woman who was a gifted composer and who was tutored by Hyacinthe Jardin, a promising young composer who died prematurely of tuberculosis. Hortense struggles to come to terms with the past that includes her father's tumultuous relationship with her mother and his horrific death at the guillotine. But she also must reconcile her view of her mother who seems to be romantically involved with Citoyen Hippolyte Charles, while her mother's second husband and Hortense's stepfather, Napoleon Bonaparte is in Egypt. Hortense dislikes the entire Bonaparte family.  Gulland portrays a young Hortense coming of age, discovering her attraction to the older Colonel Christophe Duroc and their blossoming friendship as they attend balls and other social functions.

The novel takes its name from a card game that was originally invented as a parlour game to be played with dice. It was forgotten but resurfaced in 1799 when Mlle. Lenormand began using the cards for fortune telling, an activity still forbidden by the Catholic church. Gulland's novel is divided in to eight parts featuring a card from the Game of Hope.  Gulland has Hortense use the cards on several occasions, in an attempt to predict what her future holds at a time in France when life was very unpredictable. Of course, no card game can predict one's future life, as Hortense soon learns.

Gulland in her extensive Afterword, reveals how Hortense's life really played out. She was never able to marry her love, Christophe as both her mother and Maitresse Campan counselled against it and wanted her to marry Louis Bonaparte. Hortense did relent and marry Louis but their marriage was not a happy one, nor was Christophe Duroc's marriage to a wealthy and beautiful woman. Marriages at this time were often made to cement political alliances and the feelings of those involved were not really considered. This was demonstrated in the novel by her cousin Emilie's arranged marriage to an older man, Antoine Lavalette whom she despises. Eventually his care towards her after her beauty is marred by small pox, kindles her love for him.

Although Game of Hope is well written, it will likely appeal mostly to die-hard historical fiction fans and those with a specific interest in the post-French Revolution era and Napoleon. The story is mostly character driven, with Gulland's fine attention to historical detail. The author has included a Cast of Characters, a Glossary, a map of Paris as well as a list of the cards from the Game of Hope. 
Hyacinthe Jardin's compositions are still performed today and some like her F Minor Op. 1 No. 3 written for violin, viola and violoncello can be found on YouTube.

Her biography may be accessed from the Foundation Napoleon website:

https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/biographies/beauharnais-hortense-de/

Hortense image: By Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson - www.rijksmuseum.nl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1228587

Book Details:

The Game of Hope by Sandra Gulland
New York: Viking, an Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC     2018
370 pp.

A Troubled Peace by L. M. Elliott

A Troubled Peace is the sequel to Under A War Torn Sky and tells what happens to Henry Forester when he returns to the United States after serving as pilot, being shot down, travelling through war torn Europe with the help of the French resistance, being captured and tortured by the Gestapo, and escaping in an attempt to return to America.

Henry is back home in Tidewater, Virginia and all is not well. He is struggling with nightmares, flashbacks, restlessness and insomnia. He is often angry and does strange things. Anything can trigger a flashback that leads to him doing something strange. A shot by his father Clayton at a fox triggers Henry into believing he is being hunted by the Gestapo, resulting in him running for miles across the county.
"He wanted the war in his soul to be over. He was home. Why couldn't he get back to normal? And why wouldn't Patsy marry him?" Henry had  planned a perfect proposal, dancing at the tony John Marshall Hotel in Richmond. However, Patsy turned him down telling Henry that he seems angry and scares her.

Henry worries about the fate of those who saved  him and relives events to save those who died along the way. "Henry was not quite twenty and already he carried an old man's worth of regret and mourning." All of this causes Henry to get up every night and walk the lane of the farm so his nightmares won't distress his mother. Everything comes to a crisis one night while Henry is out for a walk with his dog Speed and thinking about the blind loyalty of German troops and the stubbornness of the Nazis as they fight a hopeless battle against the Allies. Remembering his own experiences and how the Allies are now "responding to Hitler's unyielding stance with their own brutality, desperate to hasten the war's end." only increases Henry's internal conflict. Although he starts out walking and whistling a tune, soon Henry is running fast. Unable to outrun his memories he decides flying might help him distance himself from those memories and bring him closer to God.

This leads Henry to steal Old Man Newcomb's Curtiss Jenny, an open-cockpit, World War I biplane. "In Newcomb's Jenny, he'd leave his nightmares in the dust...No bombs, no flak, no fighters, no worries."  In the air, "Henry's soul rang with a long-forgotten joy." Henry, mesmerized by the stars and the Milky Way attempts to take the little Jenny higher and higher until suddenly the engine stalls out. The plane begins plummeting to earth with Henry not reacting to the danger. At the last minute, believing he hears Dan's voice telling him to pull up, Henry manages to save himself, and land the plane, but unable to stop it crashes into the trees. Henry is knocked out, Newcomb's plane is badly damaged. His father, Clayton, not understanding what is happening is furious.

Henry finally admits to his mother and father and Patsy that he "can't forget France. My friends who died. All those missions where I rained death on people, on civilian. All the people who helped me and may have been tortured and killed because of it...because of me. And that little boy Ma. Pierre. I keep worrying about where he is. If anyone is helping him." Although he tries to explain what happened with the plane, Henry knows his father doesn't understand. Nevertheless he accepts that what he did was wrong and the fact that he must pay for the damage done to Newcomb's plane.

However, Henry's mother Lilly understands and advises him that sometimes healing is brought about by helping others. She tells him, "But I don't think you'll rest easy until you know about that little boy. Maybe...maybe you need to go back to France and find Pierre?"

After three weeks at sea, Henry disembarks in Marseille, France. It was Patsy who discovered a way over to Europe for Henry after he was unable to return to the Air Force due to being too thin and too battle fatigued. The newly organized United Nations was providing relief in the form of food, clothing, medicine and livestock to Europe. Henry became a "sea cowboy" shoveling manure, feeding and watering livestock and helping to birth foals on a merchant boat bringing over livestock to Europe. The livestock boat docks in Trieste, Italy but without the proper papers to enter the country, Henry decides to jump ship and gets hired onto a boat sailing to Marseille. Now in France with cartons of cigarettes , tins of Spam and some cash, Henry sets out on a journey to find Pierre and in so doing, find himself.


Discussion

A Troubled Peace is another finely crafted work of historical fiction by L.M. Elliott that provides readers with considerable insight into life in Europe - specifically France, during the post liberation period of 1944-45 and just prior to the end of World War II. Where A Troubled Peace excels is in portraying the effects of war both on a personal level and a national scope.

The tragic effects of war on individuals are ably demonstrated through the characters of Henry, Pierre, Claudette and Madame Gaulloise. For those who fought, it is best shown through the character of Henry Forester who returns to America suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, although during the 1940's this was largely unrecognized. Recently returned to the States, Henry is unable to settle back into farm life. His traumatic experiences from the war have left him a completely changed man. At first Henry doesn't realize what is happening to him and he attempts to pick up where he left off before enlisting by asking Patsy to marry him. Henry believes that "marrying Patsy was the way back, back to the life he'd planned before the war, before the missions, before all the killing." But Patsy tells him, "You seem so angry...so haunted. I worry that you think getting married will stop all that somehow. But what if I'm not enough? I don't think I can fix all that. It scares me Henry...You scare me."

Henry describes how he feels. "Was he haunted? For sure. Every day in his mind, he walked the hills and streets of France, imagining the fate of those who'd saved him. He reflew his last bombing raid so that Captain Dan lived. He reclimbed they Pyrenees to save his friend, Billy." Henry doesn't know how to come down from constantly being on alert. "He had entrusted his life to strangers he couldn't understand, and lived off of adrenaline and suspicion, scrounging for food, scrounging for safety, rarely finding either, day after day, week after week, for months. He couldn't figure out how to shed that kind of battle-ready wariness, that kind of split-second instinct to fight, to run. Half the time, he felt like a lunatic race-horse in a start box. Nobody had said anything in debriefing about how to shrug that off."

In an attempt to flee his memories and find some peace Henry steals a neighbour's plane. "This night was about freedom. This night was about baptism -- washing himself clean of death and regrets and disappointment and fear, the beginning life reborn, redefined." But the accident with the plane merely reinforces that something is terribly wrong. In an attempt to heal, Henry returns to France to try to locate Pierre who saved his life.

Henry's journey through France does eventually help him to begin to heal and to provide the closure he needs.  He finds Madame Gaulloise who saved Henry and many other downed pilots from certain death, he reunites with Claudette whom Henry saved from certain capture. He eventually does find Pierre and learns of the shocking fate of the people of Vercors. 

As Henry searches throughout France for Pierre, he inadvertently finds himself in Annecy, the home of Madame Gaulloise. Arriving at her house Henry is at first thrilled that she might be alive and then shocked at her condition. "The invalid, the living scarecrow, was Madame Gaulloise...Henry could see that all that was left of her dark, glossy hair were little tuffs. Sores scarred her temples." Madame Gaulloise's condition is so tenuous after months of starvation that she can eat little food and she is dying of tuberculosis. Only a day after arriving, Madame passes away.

From Madame Gaulloise, Henry learns that she survived by building "a safe fortress with my memories, an inner peace that came from knowing that I had done what had to be done." She advises Henry to read Albert Camus, a French philosopher, who "wrote that man's grandeur lies in his decision to rise above his condition. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted with scorn."  She tells Henry that "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."

It is in the village of Vercors that Henry sees the devastating effect war has on the French people. In Vercors, France, the home of little Pierre and his mother, Henry is shocked by the devastation of a once vibrant country village.
"Beneath him should have been a lush green cup of fields and farms, wildflowers and sleepy cattle, ruled in the center by a little village of creamy houses with cherry pink-tiled roofs that were nestled around a church --its bell ringing out the hour, clear and sweet, rejoicing in another day.
Instead there was silence. A wide field of white crosses...
And where the village should have been --alive with roosters crowing, children yawning over cups of frothy warm milk, mothers humming as they poached eggs -- was rubble...
Henry could imagine the cries, the pleas, the refusals, the machine-gun fire, flames catching hold of timber, houses collapsing."

Henry learns the villagers of Vercors were encouraged to rise up against the Nazi's with promise of reinforcements, only to be left to face them alone. The Germans dropped incendiary bombs on the towns in retaliation, and landed SS troops with orders to exterminate everyone. French paratroopers, waiting in Sicily were never deployed, the people of Vercors sacrificed in a political move by de Gaulle.

While helping at the Lutetia's deportation center Henry begins to heal. "Seeing other people fight to survive, to walk away from the agonies they'd endured, was definitely prodding him to do likewise. " But it is when Henry spends time with Claudette, the woman he talked out of a killing rage, that he finally understands what Madame Gaulloise was attempting to tell him. Claudette explains to him what Camus meant in his short work, Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Sisyphe was a king, condemned to roll a boulder to the top of a hill every day only to see it roll back down. Sisyphe's life should have had no meaning but instead, it is his struggle that gives meaning to his life. This, Claudette tells Henry, is what he must find for himself again and the struggle to do so will help heal him. Henry comes to realize that taking Pierre back to America and helping him rebuild his life will give him a purpose. It is a beginning and one that was suggested by his mother Lilly, months ago. For Claudette, her purpose will be to rebuild her country into something better than what it was - country where women are treated as equals and where there are jobs.

Henry discovers that Pierre Dubois is now an orphan, his mother shot as she attempted to escape Ravensbruck. Pierre, like many abandoned children in Paris, searches the train station for his mother, while living in a cardboard box beneath a bridge near Notre Dame. These are just a few of the examples that portray how the war affected individuals.

Elliot also presents readers with a solid picture of what Paris and France was like in the aftermath of the war. Although liberation has brought relief from the oppression of the Nazi's, France is socially and economically devastated. According to Elliott in her Author's Note at the back, "France was the largest supplier of manpower and finished goods to Hitler's Germany. To win the war, the Allies had to destroy its production of ball bearings, tires and other such items used for Nazi tanks, planes, and ships." This meant bombing factories, supply depots and railways. Bombing these targets often meant significant collateral damage to civilians and left much of France in ruins. Elliot portrays the ruin of France both socially and economically; black marketers who ship meat and cheese in suitcases, empty stores, starving and orphaned children who search for parents at the train stations or at hotels, train stations filled with family and friends waiting for "absents" - that is people deported to concentration camps - to return.

Few novels deal with the immediate post-war period and Elliott's descriptions of the crowds in Paris waiting at the train station for the absents are deeply moving. "But when people recognized a ghostly figure, they burst through the crowd with both cries of joy and horror, gathering their loved one up in kiss-filled embraces. Others rushed forward and then stood woodenly, shocked, bewildered, repulsed."

Elliott also touches on the tenuous political situation in post-war France. The resistance contains many communist sympathizers and the United States government, which worked with Stalin to bring down the Nazis, is now concerned that France will fall under the influence of the Soviets. The author uses Henry's arrest by French police as a suspected black marketer, to portray the work of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in attempting to identify communists and even working with Nazi SS officers to do so.

Henry believes that with the war now won, and peace declared, life will go back to normal. But George Orwell tells him, "The aftermath of war is a messy, brutal elbowing among political ideologies, as different groups that survived the war battle each other for power. They will smile at one another's faces while plotting coups and spying on each other...Peace? Peace is not that easy, that finite, my boy. War ends; then it takes along time to negotiate a real truce. Many times that peace is troubled and contains the embers for the next war, smoldering, just in need of a spark..."

The title of the novel is a direct reference to Orwell's comment to Henry. It is a reference to both the struggle for peace on a personal level as Henry is experiencing and on a national and social level as France and the rest of Europe will be experiencing post war.

A Troubled Peace offers so many themes to explore: forgiveness, the concept of peace, identity, and the struggle to find meaning in life. It is a novel with richly crafted characters, realistic descriptions of settings and events and superb incorporating of historical details that make the immediate post war era come alive.

Book Details:

A Troubled Peace by L.M. Elliott
New York: Katherine Tegen Books    2009
289 pp.

The Boy At The Top Of The Mountain by John Boyne

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain is a heart-rending story of lost innocence in the face of terrible evil. It is the story of one boy's corruption at the hands of a powerful ideology that brought ruin to the Europe over seventy years ago.

Pierrot Fischer lived in an apartment with his German father, Wilhelm, a survivor and soldier of World War I and his French mother Emelie. Their family was together until Pierrot's father left in 1933, a few months after Pierrot's fourth birthday.

When Pierrot was very young his father taught him to speak German and would carry him on his shoulders while pretending to be a horse. His father was very musical, often entertaining people with folk songs. Pierrot was also able to speak French which he learned from his mother. Pierrot's father suffered from terrible nightmares which caused him to wake screaming in the night. He drank a great deal to help him forget what he experienced during the First World War.

Pierrot is best friends with a Jewish boy Anshel Bronstein who lives on the ground floor apartment of their building on Avenue Charles-Floquet.  The two boys were born within weeks of one another. Anshel is deaf so the two boys developed a sign language that allows them to communicate.

Pierrot's father works as a waiter for M. and Mme Abrahams in their restaurant and complains frequently about the poor tips from Parisians and how badly the Abrahams treat him. But he specifically blames Jewish patrons, accusing them of being greedy. When Pierrot reminds his father that his best friend Anshel is Jewish, his papa tells him that "Anshel is one of the good ones..."

Pierrot's mother and father begin to quarrel as his drinking becomes a serious problem. Shortly after his fourth birthday, Pierrot's father loses control, smashing the dishes and beating his mother unconscious. His father abandons their family and weeks later they learn that he has died after falling beneath a train travelling from Munich to Penzberg, Germany.  To support them, Pierrot's maman goes to work for the Abrahams as a waitress and for the next three years their life was simple and happy. Until 1936.

In 1936, Pierrot's mother begins coughing up blood into a handkerchief on her birthday. Emelie is taken to Hotel-Dieu de Paris hospital where she dies shortly after. Orphaned, Pierrot is sent to an orphanage run by Mme Bronstein who had hoped to care for him but does not have the money to do so. She sends him to an orphanage in the city of Orleans that is run by sisters Adele and Simone Durand.  Pierrot must leave behind his beloved dog, D'Artagnan whose care he entrusts to Anshel.

Seven-year-old Pierrot is welcomed into the orphanage by the kindly sisters who tell him his stay will probably not be long as most children are placed with families. Pierrot has trouble making friends and is bullied by one boy in particular. Hugo had lived at the orphanage his entire eleven years. Pierrot never would admit that Hugo was the one bullying him. When a serious fight occurs between Pierrot and Hugo, the true identity of the bully is revealed by the Durand sisters. Pierrot does make friends with a girl named Josette and they their spend time walking around the grounds of the orphanage.

Eventually Pierrot leaves the orphanage and travels to Germany, having been taken in by his father's sister, his Aunt Beatrix. It turns out that Beatrix is the housekeeper for Adolf Hitler who has taken over the Berghof, a large mansion located at in the Obersalzburg of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany. She has been in her position for a little over two years. 

In the morning of the first day at the Berghof, Pierrot meets Herta Theissen the second most senior maid, Emma who is the cook, Ute the senior maid and Ernst the chauffeur. Pierrot doesn't know who the master and mistress of the house are until Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun arrive. Desperate to belong and trying to make sense of his place in a world upended by war, Pierrot develops a close relationship with Adolf Hitler who proceeds to draw the young boy into the Nazi world. As he becomes a spectator to Hitler's inner world and discovers the true nature of his Aunt Beatrix and Ernst's activities, Pierrot must decide where his loyalties lie. It is a choice that will forever change his life.

Discussion
The Boy at the Top of the Mountain is a tragic novel which portrays the gradual corruption of an innocent child by Nazi ideology. The novel's main character, Pierrot matures from a seven-year-old child into a young man of sixteen over the course of the story. His journey mirrors that of millions of young German children who grew up during the Nazi era and who were indoctrinated with ideas about racial purity, a global Jewish conspiracy and Germany's defeat in World War I. Although everyone experiences a natural loss of innocence that occurs during the transition from childhood into young adult years, Pierrot's transition is from a boy who hates cruelty to others and even animals, to a young adult who is ready to sacrifice even those dear to him for power and affirmation. His entire belief system is turned upside down.

In the novel, Pierrot undergoes a gradual but steady transformation from an innocent, kind young boy to a staunch Nazi who believes he is superior and who craves power and control. His first day at the Berghof finds Pierrot overwhelmed, timid and willing to do what he's told. " 'Hello?' he said quietly, nervous of drawing too much attention to himself but hoping that someone would hear." He finds the air fresh and light, "filling his lungs and his spirit with an enormous sense of well-being." Beatrix reaffirms what Pierrot feels when she tells him that although the orphanage was good, it is better for him to be with family. "...But it's family that matters. And you and I are family. The only family that either one of us has left. We must never let each other down." This warning foreshadows the cruel way in which Pierrot will betray Beatrix's trust.

Before his relationship with Adolf Hitler, Pierrot had certain views of the world around him. Prior to going to the orphanage, his best friend was a Jewish boy, Anshel Bronstein. This doesn't matter at all to Pierrot, who trusts Anshel enough to leave his beloved dog, D'Artagnan in his care. Pierrot finds Ernst's warning about never mentioning Anshel's name at the Berghof upsetting because he doesn't understand yet how Germans view Jews. And later on when Aunt Beatrix discovers Pierrot is receiving letters from a boy named Anshel, she tells him, "I know it must see strange...But letters from this...this Anshel boy could get you into more trouble than you realize...A letter from a Jewish boy would not go down well here." 

When he arrives at the Berghof, Pierrot identifies himself as French and not German because his mother was French, he has a French name and he considers Paris his home. However, his Aunt Beatrix tells him he is German because his father was German, that he must change his name to the German form which is Pieter and that the Berghof is his home now. It is possible that Beatrix's requests, although undertaken for what she considers Pierrot's safety, leave him with an identity crisis and therefore more open to accepting the Nazi ideology.

Initially Pierrot is a helpful child, doing what his Aunt Beatrix asks of him. Watching Emma butcher a chicken makes him upset because Pierrot doesn't "like the idea of cruelty. From as far back as he could recall he had hated any sort of violence and instinctively walked away from confrontation...he could never understand the enjoyment some people got from hurting others." A letter from Anshel reveals how life has become so hard in Paris for Jews and it troubles "him to think of his friend being called names and bullied." He asks a schoolmate, Katrina if it would be better to be a bully rather than be bullied and agrees with her that this would never be a good thing.

Gradually however Pierrot's view begin to change, influenced by the Nazi culture around him at the Berghof. As he comes to know Adolf Hitler, he comes to embody the tyranny of Nazi ideology. It begins with Pierrot wearing the uniform of the Deutsches Jungvolk. When Pierrot had first arrived at the Berghof, Ernst spoke to him about uniforms, explaining why people like to wear them. "Because a person who wears one believes he can do anything he likes...He can treat others in a way he never would while wearing normal clothes. Collars, trench coats or jackboots -- uniforms allows us to exercise our cruelty without ever feeling guilt." When Pierrot puts on the uniform he feels exactly as Ernst told him weeks earlier, that he can do whatever he wants. He feels empowered just like Rottenfuher Kotler who stole his sandwiches on the train.  "He...realized how wonderful it would be to have such authority; to be able to take what you wanted, when you wanted, from whomever you wanted, instead of always having things taken from you." Hitler tells Pierrot he must wear the uniform all the time.

Hitler changes how Pierrot views his father's World War I service. His mother believed that although his father didn't die in the war, the war was what killed him. Hitler tells Pierrot that his mother was ignorant because his father should have been proud to die for Germany. Pierrot has read Hitler's Mein Kampf and is given Henry Ford's The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem. Almost nine, Pierrot begins treating the servants rudely, to the shock of Aunt Beatrix who discovers that her young nephew believes the Jews stole Germany's dignity and that his father was a coward who "allowed weakness to vanquish his spirit."  

By the time he's eleven, Pierrot acts cruelly towards the servants, threatening Emma and becoming enraged when he finds an unread letter from Anshel in his discarded book, Emil and the Detectives. Now his view of Anshel is different; "He had liked Anshel once, of course he had, but they were just children back then, and he hadn't understood what it meant to be friends with a Jew." The change in Pierrot does not go unnoticed by Aunt Beatrix and Ernst who states, "He's becoming one of them. He's getting more like them every day. He's even started ordering the servants around. I scolded him a few days ago and he told me that I should take my complaints to the Fuhrer or be silent." It is these changes that convince Aunt Beatrix and Ernst that they must act to save Pierrot and all young Germans just like him.

There are several people in Pierrot's life who try to show him that his beliefs are wrong but even more that his actions are hurting those around him. Besides his Aunt Beatrix and Ernst, his classmate Katarina directly points out to him the consequences of his actions involving Heinrich who told his classmates about the things his father had said about Hitler. Heinrich's father was dragged out of his bed and has disappeared while Heinrich and his family lost their home.

However, the transition of Pierrot from innocent French orphan to rabid German Nazi is completed when he betrays Ernst and Aunt Beatrix who plot to poison Hitler on Christmas Eve. Discovering their plot, he informs Hitler who has both executed. Pierrot tells himself that his aunt is traitor to the Fatherland and that she must be punished. From this point on, as Pierrot grows older, he becomes more cruel. He threatens Emma if she gives him any more of Anshel's letters, and he even forces himself on Katarina. Katarina is saved by Emma who tells him she doesn't understand who he has become.
" 'You were such a sweet boy when you first came here. Is it really that easy for the innocent to be corrupted?' Pieter said nothing. He wanted to curse her, to bring his fury down upon her, upon both of them, but something in the way she stared at him, the mixture of pity and contempt on her face, brought some memory of who he had once been back to his mind. Katarina was weeping now, and he looked away, willing them both to leave him alone."
Despite his shame, Pierrot tells the Fuhrer about what Emma did, lying about his part and she is taken away. Katarina's family shop is sold and they vanish from Berchtesgaden. Pierrot now becomes known in Berchtesgaden as "the boy at the top of the mountain" for what he has done.

It is only when the Allies reach the mountain and find Pierrot, now a sixteen year old, hiding in a closet that he is pulled both literally and symbolically out of the darkness of Nazism into the light of liberation. Herta, the only remaining staff member admonished Pierrot before the soldiers came. " 'Don't ever pretend that you didn't know what was going on here. You have eyes and you have ears. And you sat in that room on many occasions, taking notes. You heard it all. You saw it all. And you also know the things you are responsible for...The deaths you have on your conscience. But you're a young man still, you're only sixteen; you have many years ahead of you to come to terms with your complicity in these matters. Just don't ever tell yourself that you didn't know...That would be the worst crime of all.' "

As it turns out, Pierrot seeks redemption by telling his story. Boyne gives his readers a wonderful twist at the end of the novel, explaining how Pierrot's story came to be told. Pierrot sees the fruits of the Nazi regime in the destroyed cities and the ruined families of Germany. He leaves Germany and returns to Paris,  the city he once considered his home. The novel ends on a somewhat hopeful note, with Pierrot overwhelmed with guilt but hoping that his story might help him and others come to terms with what happened.

At the beginning of the novel,  when Pierrot leaves the orphanage run by the kindly Durand sisters, he is given a story book by Simone. That story book is Emil and the Detectives written by Erich Kastner, who was opposed to Adolf Hitler and whose novel, Fabian was publicly burned by the Nazis. The story is about a little boy on his way to the city for the first time and who has money stolen from him by a man when he falls asleep on the train. Determined to retrieve his money Emil follows the thief and with the help of a boy from the city, he is able to prove the money is his. He receives a reward because it turns out the man is a wanted thief. Emil and the Detectives demonstrates that even children have the capacity to fight against evil. Every problem Emil encounters he faces directly and has friends to help him.

In The Boy at the Top of the Mountain, Simone and her sister Adele know that Pierrot will be going to a place where he will be challenged to keep his values. Giving him this book is a foreshadowing of the troubles to come and a reminder that he can fight and overcome the evil he will encounter. The story told in Emil and the Detectives parallels Pierrot's experiences until he arrives in Germany, something he quickly realizes. However, unlike Emil, Pierrot does not fight against the evil he encounters. Instead he allows himself to be drawn into it, he refuses the advice and help of others until he himself becomes complicit in the Nazi horrors. And when he sees the book in Hitler's library four years after arriving at the Berghof, Pierrot dismisses it as a quaint children's book for which he has no use.

The Boy At the Top of the Mountain is deeply moving and terribly tragic. Historical fiction fans will appreciate John Boyne's extraordinary tale of coming of age in an era of unspeakable horrors, in the heart of Nazi Germany.

Those readers interested in learning more about the Berghof which is the setting for much of The Boy at the Top of the Mountain, will find many pictures of the mountain retreat on the website, The Third Reich in Ruins: http://thirdreichruins.com/berghof.htm

It is interesting to note that the Allied bombing completely destroyed the Berghof and it was completely eradicated after the war so nothing remained of the buildings.

Book Details:

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne
Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada    2015
215 pp.

A Little In Love by Susan Fletcher

"We all leave something behind us. A bird in flight will lose a snow-white feather, and flowers in the hedgerows will drop their petals. And people? We leave memories. Footprints in the dust and fingerprints on everything we've touched, warmth in every hand we've held. We become stories that are spoken of, for always. And in this way, we carry on."

A Little In Love tells the story of the character, Eponine Thenardier from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Fletcher's story is loosely based on the events in the novel, although they occur in a somewhat different manner. The character of Eponine is one of the more popular in both the novel and the various musicals performed in recent years. She is often considered Hugo's most interesting.

The novel opens on the Rue de la Chanvrerie. It is June 5, 1832. Eponine lies in front of the barricades, having been shot in an attempt to save Marius from being shot.  With blood everywhere, she knows she is dying. She's remembering Marius and the first time she saw him. She's also remembering her childhood in Montfermeil, a small village outside of Paris.

Eponine was born in 1815 in a hayfield to Madame Thenardier while her father Luc fought in the Battle of Waterloo. Because Eponine's mother preferred girls she decided to keep the baby.  When her father returned home from war he was rich off the money and items he plundered from the dead. With that money her parents bought the damp inn on the ruelle du Boulanger in Montfermeil, naming it the Sergeant of Waterloo.

A sister, Azelma is born, soon after. Eponine is protective of her younger sister.  She loves to watch the rain from her bedroom window because rain meant their inn would be full of customers and offer a chance for her parents to get rich. Eponine's mother would send her to the main room to rob their patrons who would not suspect a small child of picking pockets.  When Eponine would return with jewelry, coins and  rings her mother would tell her she loved her.

The Thenardiers soon take in a young girl named Cosette whose mother pays for them to care for her daughter. Cosette is a beautiful little girl with blonde hair who believes that her mother will one day return for her when she has enough money. Feeling sorry for Cosette, Eponine places her in her and Azelma's bed. However, her mother is furious at her for doing this and orders Cosette to sleep under the stairs. Madame Thenardier tells Eponine that they will use the money from Cosette's mother to pay for nice dresses and meat while Cosette will wear rags and eat crusts.

Cosette's life is very hard as she does all the dirty, hard jobs: plucking chickens, scrubbing vegetables, cleaning windows and washing the floors. Eponine tries to be kind to Cosette but her mother tells her kindness will not help her in life. Because of this Eponine decides to be cruel to Cosette. After a trip to Paris by her mother, Eponine is given a new petticoat and a white fur muff, while Azelma receives a cape with green velvet trim. Eventually their money runs out, Cosette's mother stops sending the Thenardiers money and they must return to thieving as a means of living. Eponine steals too, because she wants to make her mother happy. However, Cosette makes Eponine feel guilty for stealing from a blind man.

When Eponine is eight years old, Madame Thenardier gives birth to a boy whom she immediately abandons. Eponine with the help of Cosette care for him and he is eventually named Gavroche. At Christmas 1823 a strange man wearing a yellow jacket comes to the inn. When Madame Thenardier is cruel to Cosette, this man whose name is Jean Valjean, intercedes for her and buys her the expensive doll Azelma desperately wanted from the stall in town. He stays at the inn and buys Cosette from the Thenardiers on Christmas Day, taking her away. Eponine is jealous and sad because she knows Cosette has been saved and will lead a comfortable life with someone who loves her.

By spring the Thenardiers are destitute once again and Eponine and Azelma are forced to steal. Everytime she steals, Eponine tries to do something good to appease her conscience. However, life for Eponine only gets harder when her father murders a man and the Thenardiers are forced to flee Montfermeil and head to Paris. The journey is exhausting and cold, with the family hiding in ditches along the way. They eventually find a boat, repair it and drift downriver towards Paris. However, Gavroche is left behind, much to the horror of Eponine.

In Paris, the Thenardiers stay with Monsieur Thenardier's friend, Babet on the rue de la Charcuterie. Eponine is now fifteen years old. Although the area where she lives is poor, she soon discovers the Paris of her dreams. "The houses were grander than any I'd ever seen and the shops sold wonderful things -- soap, flowers, china, sugared confectionary laid out like stars. As for the men, they wore top hats and had neat mustaches, and the ladies wore white curled wigs with their skirts rustling behind them..." However, fourteen-year-old Azelma likes the dark side of Paris, the alleyways and the stealing. Madame Thenardier loves the gang of clever thieves called Patron Minette, consisting of Babet, the enormous Gueulemer, the mute Claquesous, and Montparness who is young and well dressed. The Patron Minette ruled the Paris underworld. In order to escape the terrible house on rue de la Charcuterie, Eponine steals continuously. A key Eponine finds leads her father to rob a wealthy home allowing the Thenardiers to move to the Gorbeau tenement.

However, they continue to live in dire poverty. This leads Monsieur Thenardier to decide to write letters to wealthy Parisians begging for money. Eponine and Azelma go to the rue de Rivoli where they use the letters to solicit money. There Eponine meets Montparnasse whom she dislikes intensely. Fleeing from the troubling encounter with Montparnasse, Eponine runs into a handsome young man back at the Gorbeau. She learns from Madame Bourgon, who runs the tenement, that the man's name is Marius Pontmercy who rents Room four. It is this encounter that changes Eponine's destiny forever.

Discussion

In A Little In Love, Fletcher portrays Eponine as a girl whose basic character is good but because of her circumstances, often finds herself drawn into a life of thieving. This sets up an enormous source of conflict in Eponine's life which she must resolve. At first Eponine steals because it is what she's been taught from birth. "Before I could even talk, my mother taught me. When I was still a baby she showed me how to grasp a lady's collar and, like this, steal her diamond brooch. She told me to smile so that passersby paused to say, 'What a pretty baby!' "

Eponine soon recognizes that she is only praised and loved by her mother when she steals. Her mother tells her "How I love you when you bring me such gifts! When you steal so well!" Eponine longs to simply be loved by her mother as her daughter. This becomes even more apparent to Eponine when she sees how Cosette's mother loves her. "My sadness sat in my heart like a pebble -- hard and sore...It was that long, tight hug that Cosette's mother had given her, the way she'd pressed her face into the place between Cosette's neck and shoulders..." Eponine knows she is only "called pretty when I'd stolen things."

When Eponine wants to be kind to Cosette her mother tells her, "Kindness is a useless thing. Useless! Do you think that kindness stops the guillotine's blade or the gnaw of hunger in a belly...It is the kind people who are tricked and fooled and stolen from! It's the kind ones who are murdered..." This results in Eponine acting cruelly towards Cosette in an attempt to win her mother's "love" and it also leads to Eponine to focus on stealing to win that approval from her mother. However, when she steals the blind man's wedding ring, Cosette's surprise at Eponine's cruelty only serves to prick her conscience and she feels shame over what she's done. So she promises herself that she will go one day to Paris to find love and to stop stealing.

Once in Paris things worsen because her family becomes involved with a gang of thieves. While the rest of her family admires the gang, Patron Minette, Eponine realizes that "I ached for something else. For something good." Eponine continues to struggle with her deep desire to live a good life in the face of extreme poverty and while living with a family made up of disreputable characters who place no value on honesty. This is particularly demonstrated when Eponine meets Montparnasse who is the youngest member of the Patron Minette. Eponine asks Montparnasse if he wishes for something better asking him, "Don't you ever want to live a kinder life?"

Eponine hopes to believe in something higher.
"All I wanted was to believe in better, just a bit. A little light and love and hope. I wanted to shake Montparnasse, to shout out that his heart might be missing but mine was still beating, and my conscience was beating too...How could he ever be happy, murdering?" But Montparnasse has been made hard by poverty and injustice. He tells her that kindness will only make her poorer. Just when she's lost hope in the ideals of love and beauty she meets Marius.

When Marius gives Eponine a five franc coin, Eponine's family can't comprehend his action. "He must be a proper fool, that boy," said Papa." But Eponine recognizes his action for what it is - an act of kindness. With the five franc coin, Eponine's family is able to eat well for weeks, proving to her that kindness does matter. It is her love for Marius and the death of her mother that motivates Eponine in the end to "...do all the good, kind acts I've ever wanted to. I won't steal. I won't lie. I 'll make people's lives better whenever I can manage it. And I'll never, ever do cruel things again." Eponine becomes determined to make amends for the harm she's done to Marius, Cosette and Jean Valjean even if it costs her everything she has. Her acts of kindness in locating Marius for Cosette and bringing the two of them together also serve to demonstrate that kindness matters.

The novel's themes of redemption and forgiveness play out in the final scenes of the story between Eponine and Cosette, and between Eponine and Marius. In both cases Eponine asks the forgiveness of Cosette and Marius, bringing her peace and foreshadowing her death.

Fletcher does an admirable job of portraying life in France after the Napoleonic Wars and the French Revolution. After the Napoleonic Wars, France became a monarchy once again with the return of the brothers of King Louis XVI. This became known as the Bourbon Restoration and lasted until1830. While there were some positive changes out of the revolution, France continued to be plagued by widespread poverty, unrest and cholera outbreaks. The Thenardier family demonstrate the effect of poverty on families and on society in general, making them vulnerable to disease and crime.

Fletcher's novel takes its title from a line in Les Miserables where Eponine mentions that she was "a little in love" with Marius. This novel has a wonderful cover, the title letters in the tricolours of the republic. A Little In Love is a dark novel whose themes of kindness, redemption and forgiveness balance out the dark characters who live for only themselves. Fans of the musical, Les Miserables will enjoy this novel. Those who have never heard of Victor Hugo's story nor the musical which is based on the classic novel will enjoy this historical novel of unrequited love set in post revolutionary France.

Book Details:

A Little in Love by Susan E. Fletcher
New York: Chicken House 2015
227 pp.

All The Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian

Ten days before the German army marched down the rue de Belleville in Paris, fourteen year old Maral Pegorian's family begins stockpiling food. Her parents know only too well the suffering during war, having survived the Armenian Massacres as children, during the first World War.

Maral and her sixteen year old brother Missak, live with their parents, Arniz and Garabed and her mother's sister, Auntie Shakeh in an apartment in Belleville, a suburb of Paris. People begin fleeing Belleville but Maral's parents, understand that marches supposedly to safety can lead to unexpected horrors. Maral's father states, "We're staying put. The last exodus we saw led straight to hell." Instead they decide to stay in their home to wait out the German occupation.  Their neighbourhood in Belleville is diverse, consisting of French from the Auvergne, Armenians, Greeks and Eastern European Jews.

When the Nazi tanks, armored trucks and black uniformed soldiers arrive, the Pegorians and their neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Kacherian and their sons, Zaven and Barkev and their daughter, Virginie, watch the ominous procession from the Kacherian's apartment.

In November, Missak, Maral, Zaven, Barkev and other young people including Henri and Jacqueline Sahadian, go to a rally at the Arc de Triomphe. The rally attended by thousands of lycee and university students is in remembrance of Armistice Day, November 11th, which the Germans are not keen to celebrate. When the Germans move to end the rally, shots are fired, and Jacqueline and Maral run to safety at the Armenian cathedral on Jean-Goujon.

Life continues on in Belleville despite the Occupation. Maral begins to find herself attracted to Zaven. She continues to attend the Lycee Victor Hugo with her friend Denise Rozenbaum who is Jewish. However, the school is not unaffected by the Nazis as Mademoiselle Levy, their Latin and Greek teacher is dismissed because she is Jewish. Missak begins working for the Resistance, chalking the walls in the neighbourhood with victory messages. He also decides to take a job as an apprentice in the printing shop. His passion is for drawing and not for school. Food grows scarce but the Pegorians are able to procure a laying hen from Maral's mother's cousins, the Nazarians who live in Alfortville.

Soon the Germans come to the rue de Belleville rounding up the Jewish families in the neighbourhood.  Maral suggests that the Lipski's leave their daughter, Claire with them, even though children are to go too. Maral goes to the Lipski's apartment  and they quickly agree to send Claire with the Pegorians. The Lipski's are taken, even though Sara Lipski is heavily pregnant, and Maral's friend, Denise Rozenbaum and her family are also rounded up.

Missak is shocked at what his family has done, telling them the Nazi's are filling buses on the rue de Belleville with the Jewish families to be taken to the  Velodrome d'Hiver. The Pegorians care for Claire but realize they will not be able to hide Claire for long. Maral brings food and clothing to the Lipskis at the Velodrome and they ask Maral to contact Sara's sister, Myriam in Nice. Missak arranges, through the resistance to get Clair out of Paris to her aunt in Nice. The Pegorians begin to realize they many have saved Claire's life when Missak tells his family the Jews are to be shipped to work camps in the east.

During the winter, Auntie Shakeh becomes terminally ill with tuberculosis. Dr. Odabashian tells Maral's mother that it is only a matter of time before she dies. Auntie Shakeh's death affects Maral's mother deeply and even after the forty days of mourning, her mother continues to be distraught and withdrawn.

Maral begins seeing Zaven that winter, after Shakeh's death, for a few hours every Sunday afternoon. Sometimes she has dinner at Zaven's home and one day his father, who is a shoemaker, offers to make Maral a pair of shoes. It is Barkev who traces her feet on a piece of cardboard and measures her for the shoes. Maral tells Zaven that she has always wanted to marry him and this leads Zaven to suggest they do so after she has finished her schooling. After exams are over in the spring, Zaven reveals that Barkev has been called up to report to the German's new mandatory work program, the service du travail obligatoire or STO. Zaven and Missak are too young to be called up but Barkev is twenty. Zaven tells Maral that Barkev is not going and that they are both going into hiding. By the following Sunday Missak informs Maral that both brothers have gone into hiding. It is a decision that will have dire consequences for both brothers and Maral, bringing devastation to both the Pegorian and the Kacherian families.

Discussion

All The Light There Was is a tale of war, love,suffering and irreplaceable loss in a community too familiar with the horrors of war. The focus is on the experience of one family in the close knit Armenian community in Paris, through the eyes of a young girl who comes of age during the Nazi Occupation of Paris. Yet the novel demonstrates the wide ranging effect of the war on virtually everyone, making Maral's narration feel authentic.

The stress of the occupation weakens and eventually kills Auntie Shakeh as it rekindles horrific memories of what she endured as a child in Mosul. The Kacherians lose both of their beloved sons, Zaven to typhus in the concentration camp, Buchenwald, Barkev as a result of the great psychological trauma endured at the same camp.Maral loses her dearly beloved Zaven, her future husband, as well as  her best friend, Denise Rozenbaum and her family. Claire Lipski never sees her mother and father and sibling again. If anything, the novel demonstrates the vast changes, the holes in the lives of those left behind. And as Maral writes, "The war was a great factory of suffering, all of it fashioned by human hands."  In the midst of all the tragedy is the forbearance of Maral's parents, especially her father who believes that having survived the tragedy of the Armenian genocide, they will survive this calamity too.

The first person narrator, Maral Pegorian is a bright, ambitious young girl who considers many possibilities for her life. She has known since she was a child that she wants to marry Zaven Kacherian, but as she tells him when he asks her about marriage, she also wants to complete her education and perhaps "go to the ecole normale and become a teacher."

 Maral is also faithful to her promise to wait for Zaven. She does struggle with her attraction to another Armenian man, Andon Shirvanian, but when she faces the reality of her increasing attraction, she ends the relationship, telling him "...The war will be over any day now. I'll be expecting Zaven back. And it's not right that I should let myself have these feelings about you. It's not fair to Zaven, or to you."

Kricorian has indicated that the genesis for this novel came about during her research into various resistance groups, among them the French Resistance, for her second novel. She discovered a group of French Resistance headed by the Armenian poet, Missak Manouchian who is mentioned in All The Light There Was. Maral's father considers Manouchian to be "a hero and a patriot." when he learns that he has been shot at Mont-Valerian.

To learn more about the Armenian experience in France, Kricorian read the memoir of the famous French Armenian actor, Charles Aznavour whose real name is Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian and she also interviewed numerous Armenians who had been in the resistance under Manouchian. Soviet Armenians who were captured by the Germans were forced to serve in the Wehrmacht and sent to France to build fortifications along the Atlantic coast. These Armenians, represented by the character Andon Shirvanian in the novel, often met the French Armenians at social functions hosted by the Aznavourians, who attempted to convince them to desert the German army. Shirvanian, like many Soviet Armenians faced a no-win situation. When he was captured by the Germans, he accepted an offer to enter into the German army. This is when Maral first meets him. However, when he was shipped back to Germany after the Allies land in France,  the train he was on was bombed. He fled to the resistance in Belgium but they could not take him in as the Allies had made a deal with Stalin to return all Soviet POWs.  As a soldier for the Soviet Union he was expected to die on the battlefield defending the motherland, and doing anything less than that, such as being taken prisoner would mean being shipped to a camp in Siberia. He decided to escape and find his way to France.

Andon creates a great deal of conflict for Maral in the novel. First she finds herself falling for him in the absence of Zaven whom she promised to be faithful. Then they meet again after they both know that Zaven will not be returning, but Maral now considers marriage to be not just about love but also about duty. After Barkev's death, Andon is still waiting but first Maral must come to terms with what he did during the war. This she does, as she explains to Jacqueline, "He was an Armenian prisoner of war who had a choice between dying and putting on a German uniform."  She now must face the disapproval of her brother, Missak and his wife, Jacqueline and possibly her father. Her sense of obligation to her son and her family are overwhelming. However, it is her father who helps her decide when he tells her that the responsibility for the decision is hers. He also tells her that in light of what he has experienced in his life, "you give people more room to do what is human." Maral's ability to do just that, allows her the chance to rebuild her life, while still honouring the memory of both Zaven and Barkev.

All The Light There Was could easily be a young adult novel, since the story is that of a young woman coming of age during World War II. The time period in the novel runs from 1940 when Maral Pergorian is fourteen years old turning fifteen to 1946 when she is twenty-one. The unappealing cover however is likely to miss this age group but will drawn in adult readers in search of a well written story with a satisfying ending.

Book Details:
All The Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt        2013
279 pp.

Starry Nights by Daisy Whitney

Julien Garnier lives in Paris with his parents where he attends the Lycee d'Aile. Julien has a deep connection to art; his mother runs the Musee d'Orsay, an art museum that displays works from 1884 to 1914 and he also sketches. He works at the Musee d'Orsay where he runs tours after school. AS a result, he is allowed into the building whenever he wants. 

One night he sees a most astonishing sight - subjects in the paintings come alive before his very eyes. Dancers from the Degas paintings step out and pirouette, a peach rolls out from a Cezanne painting, and a black cat slinks down from Manet's Olympia. The art coming alive continues for several weeks before the beginning of his story.

Julien is not sure just yet what is happening to the art so he keeps what he has seen a secret. Meanwhile he is anxiously awaiting the arrival of Auguste Renoir's lost painting, The Girl In The Garden to the Musee d'Orsay. This painting surfaced a month ago in a family of high fashion designers, the Clemenceaus, who claim to have had the painting in their family for over a hundred years. Julien is desperate to view this lost treasure, so as an incentive, his mother tells him if he does well in his literature class he will be able to see the painting before it goes up in the gallery.

 A few days later, Julien's mother takes him to see the long lost Renoir at the Clemenceau's home on Montmartre. Mrs. Clemenceau's cross-dressing son, Bonheur, invites Julien to a surprise party for his eighteenth birthday on Friday evening. It is a surprise party because he will be giving away one of his strange ceramic creations, a five-legged calf, as a prize to the person who exhibits the best surprised expression during the party.
 
During his visit with Bonheur, Julien makes an interesting discovery in the Clemenceau home when he finds himself in the wrong room on the way to the bathroom. There he finds a chalk reproduction of half of Renoir's Dance at Bougival showing Suzanne Valadon who was also an artist herself and the first female painter admitted to an art school in France. Julien wonders what the connection is between the Clemenceau family and both Valadon and Renoir, and how the Clemenceau family came to have the missing Renoir.

Dance at Bougival 

While Julien's mother reviews the documentation attesting to the authenticity of the Renoir painting, Bonheur shows the recovered Renoir painting to Julien. Julien is immediately taken with the painting, that of a beautiful girl with blonde hair in a flower garden and feels inexplicably drawn to it.

Meanwhile, Julien continues to experience strange phenomena around artwork. When he is with Emilie, an aspiring ballet dancer, he hears strains of Giselle which leads him to encourage Emilie to work towards getting in to the Paris ballet. When Julien and his friends attend Bonheur's party, Julien sneaks down into the basement and can hear women's voices from below the basement floor. He later learns from Bonheur that these voices are those of the nine Muses from Greek mythology (Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania).

Julien learns that the house at Montmarte where Bonheur lives is the same house where Suzanne Valadon lived and that he is indeed distantly related to her. Bonheur tells Julien that The Girl in the Garden is not like other paintings and that his family has been entrusted to keep it safe. Bonheur allows Julien another chance to view the lost Renoir painting and during this viewing, he witnesses one slender finger from the beautiful girl slip out of the canvas, which shimmers with silver.

The strangeness continues when Julien is sent to the Louvre to check on sun damage on a Renoir painting. There his hand is burned by the candle flame in a La Tour painting, he notices the repaired Renoir painting is showing damage again, and Rembrandt's Bathsheba has a drooping stomach. At first Julien thinks that he's crazy, but when he returns the next day to the Louvre, he discovers more paintings have damage.

Bonheur tells Julien that art is made to come alive in museums and that he has been told by the Muses that only special people like Julien can see art come to life. Bonheur also reveals to Julien that he speaks with the Muses who exist below his home and that they have given him the silver dust that he places in his five-legged ceramic calves. Bonheur tells Julien that the paintings can only come alive in museums.

Sure enough once The Girl In The Garden is hung in the Musee d'Orsay, the beautiful girl comes out of the painting, revealing herself to Julien as Clio one of the nine Muses. Julien is entranced by Clio and they go on dates in the museum, since she cannot leave the building. When Clio goes back into the painting she lives in Monet's garden. Eventually she begins to take Julien into the paintings.

As the art begins to sicken, not only in the Louvre but in galleries and museums around the world, Julien begins to suspect that a terrible curse that involves Renoir and Clio might be behind the damage and that only he and Clio will be able to save the world's priceless art, at a cost that might mean losing everything that matters most to both.

Discussion

Starry Nights is a unique and fantastical love story about a boy who falls in love with one of the Greek Muses who has been trapped in a painting due to a curse placed by Renoir. In this imaginative novel, Whitney has Clio and Julien go on dates where they travel from painting to painting - through Monet's works many of which include the bridge in his famous garden. The author has packed her story with numerous facts about paintings and various artists, although the painting at the center of the story is in fact, fictional. Nevertheless, readers might be inspired to look up Van Gogh's Starry Night, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Dancing at the Moulin Rouge, or Manet's Olympia.

The principal characters in Starry Nights are well crafted.  Julien is a tender, romantic young artist who cares deeply about art as well as inspiring others to create art. Unlucky his first time in love, he finds his "soulmate" in Clio, the Eternal Muse who spends her time inspiring art. Bonheur, the cross-dressing son of the Clemenceaus is based on the real Rosa Bonheur who lived in the 1800's and was known for her portrayal of animals and for wearing men's clothing. He's a sweet soul who helps Julien recognize his ability to heal art as the only human muse and who believes in true love. It's unfortunate other characters in the novel were not more fully developed. Instead these characters such as Julien's friends, Simon and Lucy, were one dimensional and mostly uninteresting.

Readers may find the story line somewhat complex, fantastical and will have to make a careful reading of this novel, but they will be rewarded with a satisfying conclusion to this unique story.

Image credit: Dance at Bougival: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_at_Bougival#/media/File:Dance-At-Bougival.jpg

Book Details:
Starry Nights by Daisy Whitney
New York: Bloomsbury      2013
275 pp.