{"id":4446,"date":"2022-05-23T07:38:40","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T14:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4446"},"modified":"2022-05-23T07:38:40","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T14:38:40","slug":"juliet-blackwell-the-paris-showroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/juliet-blackwell-the-paris-showroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Juliet Blackwell: The Paris Showroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is not a mystery, but an historical novel by the talented Juliet Blackwell, who has two cozy series to her credit as well as several novels.\u00a0 This novel is set in a now very familiar time period: WWII.\u00a0 Blackwell\u2019s story takes place in occupied France, and she has a slightly different and original twist to her story.\u00a0 The main characters are Capucine, a fan maker, and her estranged daughter, Mathilde.\u00a0 The two live lives that haven\u2019t intersected much, but this is not only the story of Mathilde\u2019s growth from a callow, privileged young woman into something much more, but the story of Capucine, a true flapper in every way, who is now being held prisoner by the Nazis on the top floor of a Paris department store.<\/p>\n

Mathilde, who has been raised by her conservative grandparents, is starting to chafe a bit under their house rules, which include a suggested marriage to a man she finds exceedingly dull.\u00a0 Early on she discovers that her mother and her grandfather have both been arrested, and she starts to take an interest in her mother\u2019s life and to try and understand what drove them apart.\u00a0 Her grandfather, arrested as a Communist, is unfortunately deported to somewhere called Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

Because Capucine was mostly guilty by association, she\u2019s kept captive in France.\u00a0 I had never heard of the camps the Nazis set up in Paris itself.\u00a0 The men and women in the store have the heartbreaking work of sorting through the crates and crates of belongings delivered by German soldiers, belongings confiscated from Parisian Jews.\u00a0 The Nazis seize everything, down to the lightbulbs.\u00a0 All the items are carried into the store by the men, and the women sort them to be sent on to Germany.\u00a0 Some of the higher end items, furniture and art, are kept in the store for higher up Nazi officers to use in their Paris apartments.<\/p>\n

One of them lives with a woman Capucine had known (and not liked too much), and she ends up being their decorator, by virtue of her work in her father\u2019s high end fan shop and her connection with design and fashion.\u00a0 This gets Capucine out of the store and into the homes of Nazi wives around Paris where she selects items for them to use.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very strange and uncomfortable half-life, but she also realizes she is lucky, because unlike most of the people she lives and works with, she is allowed to see daylight and Paris itself, which all of them miss.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mathilde is discovering her two best childhood friends have taken very different paths \u2013 one is dating a Nazi officer, and one is apparently a part of the resistance. While Mathilde is sorting through her feelings, she\u2019s also sorting through the wreck of her grandfather\u2019s fan store and, discovering love letters written to her mother, discovering more about her mother as well.\u00a0 The language of fans and the feathers used to make them are a fascinating part of the book. Mathilde is slowly becoming, as we would say today, woke.<\/p>\n

I liked the characters in the book, I loved the joyous and chaotic liberation of Paris scenes, and I was interested to learn more about the occupation of Paris.\u00a0 But I have a bit of a caveat \u2013 the book is slightly wander-y and lacks any real drive.\u00a0 There are many interesting bits and details but ultimately the story was a little flat, though I was happy enough at the end as the characters find some resolution in their lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is not a mystery, but an historical novel by the talented Juliet Blackwell, who has two cozy series to her credit as well as several novels.\u00a0 This novel is set in a now very familiar time period: WWII.\u00a0 Blackwell\u2019s story takes place in occupied France, and she has a slightly different and original twist … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[189,838,10,429,717,837,839,840],"class_list":["post-4446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-berkley","tag-fan-making","tag-historical","tag-juliet-blackwell","tag-mothers-and-daughters","tag-occupied-paris","tag-resistance","tag-the-paris-showroom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4446"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4453,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions\/4453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}