Weekend Round-Up

Fall Favorites

Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure

This book will appeal to the historical fiction lovers and if you want to taste the city of Paris during the World War II era.

"The Paris Architect"is a story of an architect based in Paris during the World War II when Germans have occupied the city and were ordering the Jews out of the city. Like most gentiles in Nazi-occupied Paris, architect Lucien Bernard has little empathy for the Jews. So when a wealthy industrialist offers him a large sum of money to devise secret hiding places for Jews, Lucien struggles with the choice of risking his life for a cause he doesn’t really believe in. Ultimately he can’t resist the challenge and begins designing expertly concealed hiding spaces—behind a painting, within a column, or inside a drainpipe—detecting possibilities invisible to the average eye. But when one of his clever hiding spaces fails horribly and the immense suffering of Jews becomes incredibly personal, he can no longer deny reality. 

The theme of the book is centered around about how one stands up or stands against the Germans to be a human being.

"A Secret Sisterhood The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Elliot and Virginia Woolf " by Emily Midorikawa, Emma Claire 

Sweeney and a forward by Margaret Atwood.

“A Secret Sisterhood” is a fascinating and entertaining read on the little studied subject of female literary friendships that early women writers had with friends. Most that is written is about Austen and Charlotte Bronte and shows them working in isolation (aside from the Bronte siblings); in fact they both had active friendships with other women both through correspondence and face to face, where they talked about their work. Eliot and Woolf have less of a reputation for loneliness, but still aren’t considered to be extroverts. But they, too, had their special friends with whom they could talk shop. 

It is split into four sections, covering each of the writers named in the subtitle and their relationship with a particular other female writer in their life. There is quoting from letters and diaries to give detail of these friendships, in addition it's a literary analysis of the writers. 

The friendships the authors the book chose to research cover a great span of literature and there is sure to be at least one pairing that will appeal to just about every reader: Jane Austen and Anne Sharp; Charlotte Bronte and Mary Taylor; George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf.

"Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D.Vance

This memoir is a personal history mixed with cultural and political analysis. It's the story of one man's experience living in the culture of Appalachia and placing his experience in the broader context of American society. "Hillbilly Elegy"demonstrates the full measure of the brokenness that wracks Appalachia, but it is also a story that exemplifies the depths of familial love and opportunity. It is an honest look at dysfunction that affects too many working class Americans. 

Vance grew up in southeastern Ohio and eastern Kentucky, largely raised by his grandmother (Mamaw) and having a complicated relationship with his family members.  The early chapters about family are compelling, but the last few chapters, touching on the cultural hurdles a hillbilly in a high class East Coast law school must overcome, are fascinating too. 

Vance shows us how many things the upper middle class takes for granted—how to dress for an interview, how to schmooze a prospective employer, how to strive for what you really want not what you’re supposed to want—are difficult for a young man from a poor background. While he portrays it as an institution in which he feels out of place (very few people from poor backgrounds go to Yale Law School), he also was afforded the opportunity to go there. That tension—the fact that he managed to "beat the odds" while still acknowledging the deep cultural divide between elite institutions and wide swaths of middle America (the region of the United States sometimes derisively referred to as "flyover country")—pervades the book and ultimately makes it such an important book 

Vance’s insights are noteworthy not only because of his family background but also because he shows us two Americas—one divided less by race or geography (though those certainly matter), but by class and values. There is a need for more books like "Hillbilly Elegy" that help build awareness of these cultural barriers.

Side Note:

Journalists wrote that the book was of specific importance during the 2016 United States presidential elections, as Vance compassionately describes the white underclass that fueled the campaign of Donald Trump and a resurgence of outsider politics.

"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles

In the year 1922, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov has been sentenced to House arrest at the famed Moscow Hotel Metropol. Once of the landed elite of Nizhy Novgorod, the Count must live out the rest of his days in one small hotel room. As the Bolsheviks have persevered following their revolution, no longer are there ruling classes in Russia, only comrades. It is under these conditions that Count Rostov has become a former person who can no longer step outside of the Metropol. Using this premise, Amor Towles has woven prose to create an enchanting story that makes up the Count's changed course of existence.

Over time, Count Rostov grew to call himself the luckiest man in Russia. This realization, however, occurs after he has been in the hotel Metropol for over thirty a years and forged close friendships with her staff and inhabitants.

What makes this novel a true work of historical fiction are Towles' apt descriptions of life occurring outside of the Metropol's walls. Stalin has taken control of the country, and Russians can either join the party, get shipped to Siberia, or otherwise be conveniently disposed of. Relations with the west are tenuous at best, but Towles relays these feelings in the Count's relations with American ambassador Richard Wilshire, who becomes a key figure in the novel. As long as one has friends within the party, which the Count manages to attain, even enemies like him can remain safe on a daily basis, even if it means living within the walls of a hotel.