what i’m reading: the lost girls of paris by pam jenoff

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff is our Book Club read for the month. We will get together at the end of this month, at a nice restaurant and talk about the book and other things with a bunch of ladies from the gym. I can’t wait to hear what others thought about it.

It was also nice for me to read a book on paper which is something I don’t do very often these days. This time around though, one of the ladies from our book club organised a ‘book club kit’ from Stanton Library and I borrowed one. It was nice to settle in my reading chair with a cup of tea next to me wearing my ‘reading socks’ and my pants-on-fire dog settled nicely in her own bed which is a rare occassion. I so enjoyed being away from my computer or my Kindle for a change. A total bliss!

My thoughts on The Lost Girls of Paris
I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. That is a fact. But I also loved the way the whole book is structured. Pam Jenoff, the author, found this particular structure challenging as she mentioned it at the end of the book (Acknowledgements part). She said she had to research and write the individual stories of three women across three different time frames and five countries. I can see how it would be challenging however, the execution of it is quite something.

Here’s my highlights from The Lost Girls of Paris…

She tried to keep her distance from the clients. She knew that if she allowed them into her heart even a crack, their pain would break her.

The days of training and struggling with the other girls had woven them together in a kind of fabric from which she could not tear herself away.

Even now, it made her insides ache to remember, the pain as fresh as though it had happened yesterday.

Create a story of which you will be proud.

But the truth was when it came to grief, each person was an island, alone.

If not for the second-worst mistake of Grace Healey’s life, she never would have found the suitcase.

The truth,” he added darkly, “is sometimes the very opposite from what you expect it to be.” And once out, Eleanor thought silently, you can’t put it back any more than returning a mist of perfume to a bottle once it has been sprayed.

“You know, when you were little and you got hurt or scared, I could make it all better with a hug or treat. But when your children get older, it becomes less and less easy to heal their wounds.”

“You kept this from me.” “I didn’t include you,” he corrected. As if that made a difference.

Churchill had authorized the creation of Special Operations Executive, or SOE, and charged it with the order to “set Europe ablaze” through sabotage and subversion. … Churchill had said to set Europe ablaze, but the hard truth was that innocents got burned.

Women had risen up to take on all sorts of roles on the home front, not just nursing and local guard. They manned antiaircraft guns and flew planes. Why was the notion that they could do this, too, so hard to understand?

“I had no choice. I was acting on orders.” How many times had she read that in the reports of captured German war criminals, who said they were powerless, that they had no choice but to commit the atrocities by their own hands?

I highly recommend The Lost Girls of Paris to everyone who is into historical fiction.