Paris, 1940: He pressed the tattered book into her hands. ‘You must go to the café and ask at the counter for Pierre Duras. Tell him that I sent you. Tell him you’re there to save the people of France.’
Sliding the coded message in between the crisp pages of the hardback novel, bookstore owner Laurence slips out into the cold night to meet her resistance contact, pulling her woollen beret down further over her face. The silence of the night is suddenly shattered by an Allied plane rushing overhead, its tail aflame, heading down towards the forest. Her every nerve stands on end. She must try to rescue the pilot.
But straying from her mission isn’t part of the plan, and if she is discovered it won’t only be her life at risk…
America, years later: when Jeanne uncovers a dusty old box in her father’s garage, her world as she knows it is turned upside down. She has inherited a bookstore in a tiny French village just outside of Paris from a mysterious woman named Laurence.
Travelling to France to search for answers about the woman her father has kept a secret for years, Jeanne finds the store tucked away in a corner of the cobbled main square. Boarded up, it is in complete disrepair. Inside, she finds a tiny silver pendant hidden beneath the blackened, scorched floorboards.
As Jeanne pieces together Laurence’s incredible story, she discovers a woman whose bravery knew no bounds. But will the truth about who Laurence really is shatter Jeanne’s heart, or change her future?
Inspired by true events, an epic and emotional novel about one woman’s strength to survive in the most difficult circumstances and the power of love in the face of darkness. Fans of The Alice Network, The Nightingale and The Lost Girls of Paris will be completely gripped from the very first page.
I'm delighted to be hosting the blog tour for The Paris Network today. Many thanks to Siobhan Curham, Sarah Hardy and Bookouture for inviting me and for my advance copy of the novel, received through Netgalley.
The Paris Network features many of the elements that I most love in historical fiction; a dual timeline set partly during the Second World War, inspiring characters, a sense of intrigue and danger, and I learned something new about the period despite this being a familiar topic.
The book opens with a disturbing prologue featuring an unnamed character whose plaintive first-person narrative makes it clear that not only have they already been subjected to a horrifying ordeal, worse is yet to come. It does quickly become obvious who this character is but how they end up here isn't revealed until much later in the novel.
Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Laurence's childhood sweetheart, Luc has been called up to the Maginot Line to defend France. There's a terrible inevitability to this early part of the book as the misleading months of the phoney war eventually draw to a close and much of the country is occupied by the German army. As the small town where Laurence has only recently opened her bookstore on the site of her mother's old dress shop is taken over by the Nazis, her fear and devastation becomes almost palpable. These chapters are told from her perspective which gives them a sense of suspenseful immediacy, particularly as she becomes increasingly determined to fight for liberty any way she can.
Although not a novel about the Holocaust, the forthcoming atrocities are acknowledged and it's a sickening act of violence that persuades Laurence that like her childhood hero, Saint Jeanne (Joan of Arc), she is prepared to die for France. Although she becomes actively involved in the Resistance, hers is a quieter act of defiance in many ways too, yet no less powerful; as the Nazis ban books, she realises the power of words and ideas are more vital than ever. Many people reading The Paris Network will be able to recall the times when literature provided the solace or inspiration they needed and will relate to Laurence's belief, passed on from her mother, that humans need stories more than they need food.
The importance of words is a theme that runs throughout The Paris Network, from the poems that Laurence dispenses to her friends as balms for their soul to the incredible bravery of the underground publishing industry in France that resisted, informed and persuaded despite the very real risk of death. Emily Dickinson's Hope, Rilke's Go to the Limits of Your Longing, Steinbeck's The Moon is Down and many more poems, novels and essays are woven into the narrative. Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Paul Éluard's poem, Liberté become particularly and very poignantly integral to the plot as Laurence's love for her country and the man she unexpectedly meets bring her joy and despair.
The chapters set during the war are always going to be the most moving but the storyline following Jeanne is still engrossing and two connected plots complement one another perfectly. When Jeanne discovers her father has kept a secret from her for years, the revelation doesn't come as a surprise but as she and Wendell travel to France to learn more about what happened to Laurence, there are some deeply emotional scenes with cleverly smooth transitions between the two periods.
The Paris Network is a gripping, beautifully written tribute to the courage of those who resisted the Nazis, both through their brave deeds and their refusal to lose their belief in liberty and freedom. It's also a potent reminder of why oppressors ban and burn books; words capture our hearts and minds even when our lives are torn apart. I finished The Paris Network in floods of tears; absolutely heartbreaking and yet tremendously uplifting, I thoroughly recommend it!
The Paris Network is published by Bookouture and can be purchased from Amazon where it is also available on Kindle Unlimited. If you enjoy listening to audiobooks, then it can be purchased from Audible UK and Audible US. Listen to a sample here.
Don't miss the rest of the blog tour, details are below.
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