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Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France
A transcendent work of narrative nonfiction in the vein of The Hare with Amber Eyes-at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed women trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history
"A most strange and compelling book driven by the writer's unsparing search for truth: now an optimistic hunt for a family heroine, now a study in female wiles of survival, now a portrait of one very ordinary person's frailty in the face of terrible odds."-John le Carré
When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunk full of his late aunt's personal belongings, he was unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals and photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy.
As a young boy, Shakespeare had always believed that his aunt was a member of the Resistance and had been tortured by the Germans. The truth turned out to be far more complicated.
"A most strange and compelling book driven by the writer's unsparing search for truth: now an optimistic hunt for a family heroine, now a study in female wiles of survival, now a portrait of one very ordinary person's frailty in the face of terrible odds."-John le Carré
When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunk full of his late aunt's personal belongings, he was unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals and photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy.
As a young boy, Shakespeare had always believed that his aunt was a member of the Resistance and had been tortured by the Germans. The truth turned out to be far more complicated.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2013
157 people are currently reading
1731 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Shakespeare
38 books110 followersNicholas William Richmond Shakespeare is a English novelist and biographer.
Born to a diplomat, Nicholas Shakespeare grew up in the Far East and in South America. He was educated at the Dragon School preparatory school in Oxford, then at Winchester College and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist for BBC television and then on The Times as assistant arts and literary editor. From 1988 to 1991 he was literary editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.
Since 2000, Shakespeare has been Patron of the Anita Goulden Trust, helping children in the Peruvian city of Piura. The UK-based charity was set up following an article that Shakespeare wrote for the Daily Telegraph magazine, which raised more than £350,000.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford.
Born to a diplomat, Nicholas Shakespeare grew up in the Far East and in South America. He was educated at the Dragon School preparatory school in Oxford, then at Winchester College and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist for BBC television and then on The Times as assistant arts and literary editor. From 1988 to 1991 he was literary editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.
Since 2000, Shakespeare has been Patron of the Anita Goulden Trust, helping children in the Peruvian city of Piura. The UK-based charity was set up following an article that Shakespeare wrote for the Daily Telegraph magazine, which raised more than £350,000.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 136 reviews
June 15, 2014
I was hoping for more intrigue, more action... but this read like a disjointed journal. It was a bit too dry, a bit too uninteresting - perhaps for the author it was interesting, delving into family history, but it just didn't make for a good read in my opinion.
October 29, 2013
I received an Uncorrected Proof copy of this book from HarperCollins.
Priscilla is the result of Nicholas Shakespeare's research about his mysterious aunt, who survived World War II in occupied France. As a child, Shakespeare knew his aunt as a glamorous, languorous woman who placated a demanding and possessive husband while living on his mushroom farm. She was beautiful and enigmatic. Rumors swirled about her life in the early 1940s, yet little was known. After her death, Shakespeare decided to uncover the truth of Priscilla's experiences in World War II.
Priscilla was the result of a very unhappy marriage between Doris and Stuart Petre Brode "SPB" Mais, a famous radio personality and author. SPB and Doris' marriage did not survive Priscilla's childhood, and she grew up split between two households, feeling rejected by her father whom she adored, and ridiculed by her impatient and selfish mother. Her father quickly had a second family and two more daughters with his common-law wife, Winnie. The author is the son of one of those daughters from SPB's second union.
It seems as if Priscilla's beauty and charm made her appealing to a great many men. She had many admirers and lovers throughout her life. She met her first husband, Vicomte Robert Doynel De La Sausserie while traveling to try to obtain an abortion that resulted from her first failed love affair. Robert was impotent throughout their marriage, however, Priscilla maintained contact with him throughout her life, and seemed to see the much older Robert as the father she felt she never had.
During the war, Robert was sent to the front, leaving Priscilla on his French estate in the care of his family. However, when the Germans invaded France, the Englishwoman living in their midst quickly became a risk and Priscilla was sent alone to Paris. Priscilla was eventually sent to an internment camp at Besancon in 1940 with other non-French women rounded up from France. Conditions were horrible - hygiene was non-existent, they were forced to wear blood stained military coats that were formerly the belongings of French soldiers who died in the First World War, and she was housed in a room with 48 other women. "Her gums turned black from the diet. She lost 30 pounds and stopped menstruating. Her grim face, thin and dirt-streaked, was covered in blue marks from her bedsack and red bites" (194). Priscilla was eventually released under the guise that she was pregnant.
It is at this point in Priscilla's tale that her story becomes suspect. She is involved with a myriad number of men for the remainder of WWII, at least one of which was a German very closely ranked to Hitler. He may have been "the prominent Nazi official believed by Gillian to have been responsible for naming and enforcing the 'Otto' list, in which the works of authors like Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf and Margaret Mitchell were proscribed and pulped as 'undesirable'" (288). In one confusing chapter, it is revealed that Priscilla, who was sleeping with the married Daniel Vernier while being friends with and using the identity of his wife Simone, fell in love with her lover Daniel's married brother-in-love, Pierre. Pierre and Priscilla both hoped to get divorced and have a daughter together, who they referred to as 'Carole.' Although remarkable, it was wartime, and Priscilla was the product of an unhappy childhood and was deeply lost and troubled, in addition to fighting for her survival. "Nothing would surprise me in the war. Absolutely nothing. It's a question of survival. You never knew who you were going to meet and you lived from day to day. I'm sure that you would have collaborated if you had wanted to live" (289).
My greatest frustration with this book were the segues into detailed biographical descriptions of minor characters, including most of Priscilla's men. The worst part about Priscilla's very active love life was that it made it difficult to keep up with as a reader, and I was somewhat confused about which man was which at times. This book may benefit from a character list, since these individuals are not as near and dear to the reader's heart as they are to the author, who has a personal, familial stake in keeping track of everyone. Also, (and this may change in the final copy of the book) I was frustrated by the inclusion of frequent French lines with no translations.
Priscilla's life seems to be one that is largely unfulfilled and deeply unhappy. An alcoholic and in poor health near the end of her life, Priscilla never achieved two of her greatest dreams: to have children of her own and to publish her writing. Additionally, Priscilla was haunted by her past, and did not confide the full extent of her life in Occupied France to anyone. "Once, Priscilla was rereading Candide and noticed she was eating all the time, and realized that she had read the novella in a state of semi-starvation in Besancon. There were triggers she tried to avoid - being jostled in the Underground or anyone in uniform" (377). Although Priscilla's life seems to be entirely morally ambiguous and full of disappointments and unrealized dreams, she did survive. She left a paper trail to reveal her story, raised two step-children, and although she was never published, her story and her words are now published for the world to see.
Priscilla is the result of Nicholas Shakespeare's research about his mysterious aunt, who survived World War II in occupied France. As a child, Shakespeare knew his aunt as a glamorous, languorous woman who placated a demanding and possessive husband while living on his mushroom farm. She was beautiful and enigmatic. Rumors swirled about her life in the early 1940s, yet little was known. After her death, Shakespeare decided to uncover the truth of Priscilla's experiences in World War II.
Priscilla was the result of a very unhappy marriage between Doris and Stuart Petre Brode "SPB" Mais, a famous radio personality and author. SPB and Doris' marriage did not survive Priscilla's childhood, and she grew up split between two households, feeling rejected by her father whom she adored, and ridiculed by her impatient and selfish mother. Her father quickly had a second family and two more daughters with his common-law wife, Winnie. The author is the son of one of those daughters from SPB's second union.
It seems as if Priscilla's beauty and charm made her appealing to a great many men. She had many admirers and lovers throughout her life. She met her first husband, Vicomte Robert Doynel De La Sausserie while traveling to try to obtain an abortion that resulted from her first failed love affair. Robert was impotent throughout their marriage, however, Priscilla maintained contact with him throughout her life, and seemed to see the much older Robert as the father she felt she never had.
During the war, Robert was sent to the front, leaving Priscilla on his French estate in the care of his family. However, when the Germans invaded France, the Englishwoman living in their midst quickly became a risk and Priscilla was sent alone to Paris. Priscilla was eventually sent to an internment camp at Besancon in 1940 with other non-French women rounded up from France. Conditions were horrible - hygiene was non-existent, they were forced to wear blood stained military coats that were formerly the belongings of French soldiers who died in the First World War, and she was housed in a room with 48 other women. "Her gums turned black from the diet. She lost 30 pounds and stopped menstruating. Her grim face, thin and dirt-streaked, was covered in blue marks from her bedsack and red bites" (194). Priscilla was eventually released under the guise that she was pregnant.
It is at this point in Priscilla's tale that her story becomes suspect. She is involved with a myriad number of men for the remainder of WWII, at least one of which was a German very closely ranked to Hitler. He may have been "the prominent Nazi official believed by Gillian to have been responsible for naming and enforcing the 'Otto' list, in which the works of authors like Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf and Margaret Mitchell were proscribed and pulped as 'undesirable'" (288). In one confusing chapter, it is revealed that Priscilla, who was sleeping with the married Daniel Vernier while being friends with and using the identity of his wife Simone, fell in love with her lover Daniel's married brother-in-love, Pierre. Pierre and Priscilla both hoped to get divorced and have a daughter together, who they referred to as 'Carole.' Although remarkable, it was wartime, and Priscilla was the product of an unhappy childhood and was deeply lost and troubled, in addition to fighting for her survival. "Nothing would surprise me in the war. Absolutely nothing. It's a question of survival. You never knew who you were going to meet and you lived from day to day. I'm sure that you would have collaborated if you had wanted to live" (289).
My greatest frustration with this book were the segues into detailed biographical descriptions of minor characters, including most of Priscilla's men. The worst part about Priscilla's very active love life was that it made it difficult to keep up with as a reader, and I was somewhat confused about which man was which at times. This book may benefit from a character list, since these individuals are not as near and dear to the reader's heart as they are to the author, who has a personal, familial stake in keeping track of everyone. Also, (and this may change in the final copy of the book) I was frustrated by the inclusion of frequent French lines with no translations.
Priscilla's life seems to be one that is largely unfulfilled and deeply unhappy. An alcoholic and in poor health near the end of her life, Priscilla never achieved two of her greatest dreams: to have children of her own and to publish her writing. Additionally, Priscilla was haunted by her past, and did not confide the full extent of her life in Occupied France to anyone. "Once, Priscilla was rereading Candide and noticed she was eating all the time, and realized that she had read the novella in a state of semi-starvation in Besancon. There were triggers she tried to avoid - being jostled in the Underground or anyone in uniform" (377). Although Priscilla's life seems to be entirely morally ambiguous and full of disappointments and unrealized dreams, she did survive. She left a paper trail to reveal her story, raised two step-children, and although she was never published, her story and her words are now published for the world to see.
November 27, 2018
It's two stories, each one intriguing and unpredictable. Nicholas Shakespeare, the real-life author, finds that the family stories about his aunt's life in occupied France were untrue - or at least misleading, once he happens across a trunk of his aunt's effects. These hint at something darker - and illustrate the book - but turn out only the start of his epic search to find more evidence, more surviving witnesses, more (tangled) genealogy, more documentary and police records about his aunt. It's a journey that takes him through several countries, which he tells as his aunt's story unfolds.
Her story, as it turns out, is that of a woman who must survive by any means, any wiles she can exert, as she is buffeted by personal, family and world disasters. A broken family, a youth in pre-war France, a loveless marriage to a French nobleman, an abortion - all before the Nazi invasion. She misses the evacuation and has to make her way as a British national in Nazi-occupied France - tracked by police, put in a detention camp in Besancon, released mysteriously. During this period she rubs shoulders with a cast of characters out of an Alan Furst mystery, only real-life - theater and literary figures, black-marketers, German and Vichy officials.
It's not a war story but one woman's survival in murky times: the Occupation was a period, well-described here, where people lived in moral ambiguities, shortages and real danger, unable to direct events but to somehow slide through them. It's not an upbeat story but an unpredictable and interesting one, and says much about the times that the survivors apparently wanted forgotten, wanted hidden. That the author was able to retrace these places and these people, and elicit this story, is as fascinating as Priscilla's. The reader is never sure how either will end. That the author can take these murky, ambiguous events and make a coherent, and well-written, narrative says much about his skill.
Highly recommend, especially those interested in social (not military) history of the Occupation and the Second World War. Due out January 2014.
Her story, as it turns out, is that of a woman who must survive by any means, any wiles she can exert, as she is buffeted by personal, family and world disasters. A broken family, a youth in pre-war France, a loveless marriage to a French nobleman, an abortion - all before the Nazi invasion. She misses the evacuation and has to make her way as a British national in Nazi-occupied France - tracked by police, put in a detention camp in Besancon, released mysteriously. During this period she rubs shoulders with a cast of characters out of an Alan Furst mystery, only real-life - theater and literary figures, black-marketers, German and Vichy officials.
It's not a war story but one woman's survival in murky times: the Occupation was a period, well-described here, where people lived in moral ambiguities, shortages and real danger, unable to direct events but to somehow slide through them. It's not an upbeat story but an unpredictable and interesting one, and says much about the times that the survivors apparently wanted forgotten, wanted hidden. That the author was able to retrace these places and these people, and elicit this story, is as fascinating as Priscilla's. The reader is never sure how either will end. That the author can take these murky, ambiguous events and make a coherent, and well-written, narrative says much about his skill.
Highly recommend, especially those interested in social (not military) history of the Occupation and the Second World War. Due out January 2014.
June 29, 2018
I found this book dragged somewhat. I did learn something of the difficulties of life in occupied France, but in the end, this was a sad tale of a woman who wanted to be loved and seemed to spend her life looking for it in all the wrong places.
January 3, 2014
I was a goodreads first reads winner of the book "Priscilla:the Hidden Life of an Englishwomen in Wartime France. this is written by Nicholas Shakespeare, the nephew of Priscilla. after his aunt's death Nicholas goes through artifacts in his aunts attic. he is surprised to find pictures and letters from is aunt describing her years in France during World War 2 and the Holocaust. his aunt had never talked of those years. now through the letters he discovered he found his aunt went through some horrible times. she writes of what she did to survive. I try to understand that during such horrific times what people will do to survive. his aunt did what she had to do some may not approve some of her choices. but i think that "who knows what I would do to save my life" some parts of this book kind of dragged and were harder to get through. I have a copy that was an uncorrected proof. so the pictures are kind of blurry and no captions saying who is in the picture. anyone interested in historical non fiction may find this book of interest.
January 20, 2014
Review copy sent to me by Harper Collins.
Priscilla: The hidden life of an Englishwoman in wartime France –is the first non-fiction read of 2014. I was especially bad at reading non-fiction last year and have been quite picky about which non-fiction books I select to read. This turned out to be an excellent book to begin my non-fiction reading of 2014. Often in the past I have been fascinated by biographical accounts of life during WWII, so I looked forward to this book, knowing it concerned one of my favourite subjects. I wasn’t disappointed; I found the book fascinating and hugely readable. Nicholas Shakespeare is a novelist (of who I confess I hadn’t heard) but I am sure that it is his experience as a novelist that makes this book so engaging.
Priscilla – Nicholas Shakespeare’s rather glamorous and mysterious aunt had lived for four years in a France under Nazi occupation, it was a time of which she never spoke. Nicholas had grown up under the impression that his aunt had been a member of the Resistance, that she had been tortured by the Germans. This turned out to be an inaccurate picture of what really happened during those dark years, of which few people who lived through it were prepared to speak. Nicholas Shakespeare remembered visiting Priscilla, living on a Sussex mushroom farm with her second husband Raymond during the 1950’s and 1960’s. She spent long hours in her bedroom, watching a television set that had been placed on an old padded bench at the end of the bed.
“I have a vivid memory of the room because at the foot of the double bed was the first television I had laid eyes on. As prosaic now as the taste of mushrooms, it was regarded, then, as the ultimate luxury to have a television set in your bedroom. The compact, bulbous screen rested on a wooden chest which had a padded top, striped black and white, and it was a special occasion as a boy to be allowed to sit and watch, sometimes with Priscilla. The earliest films I can recall were watched from my aunt’s bed which, even when she was not seated beside me, had the smell of the scent that she always wore, and which I associate with the characters whose dramas I tried to follow on screen. I cannot remember anything about this scent, except that it was strong; but I asked my mother and she said that it was Caleche by Hermes.”
It was this padded bench that was home to Priscilla’s personal belongings, letters, journals and photographs that while certainly not answering all the questions of Priscilla’s mysterious past – set her nephew on a quest to discover exactly who she was.
Priscilla was the eldest daughter of Stuart Petre Brodie Mais (1885–1975) – known as SPB – a writer and radio broadcaster whose voice in particular was well known during the war. Her relationship with her parents was often difficult – her father choosing a second family with his common law wife and their daughters (one of whom was Nicholas Shakespeare’s mother) over her, was something Priscilla was never really able to get past.
Following his aunts death in 1982 Nicholas Shakespeare became increasingly interested in his aunts mysterious past. How had she survived the Nazi occupation? – What had happened to her? Priscilla had lived in France for many years as a young girl; it had been where she met her great friend Gillian. In 1937 she met a minor French aristocrat Robert Doynel de la Sausserie on a train. She married him in December 1938, afterwards living with him in Paris as well as spending time at the family chateau in the French countryside. With the outbreak of war Robert dons the uniform he had worn during the First World War (he is a lot older than Priscilla) and leaves her with his family at Boisgrimot – the family home in the countryside.
When the occupying Nazi forces arrive in the summer of 1940 – Priscilla’s British passport puts her (and her French family) in great danger. She spends a few months interned at Besancon with other British women suffering terrible conditions and near starvation. A French doctor helped to secure her release in the early spring of 1941 – and Priscilla heads back to Paris. What happens to Priscilla between then and October 1944 when, following the allied liberation of Paris, Priscilla pulls up to the door of her friend Gillian’s Mayfair house in a taxi, was, for many years a mystery. As were some of her first words to her friend “I got out just in time.”
Using painstaking research Nicholas Shakespeare finally unravels the mystery of his aunt’s life in occupied France. His investigations lay to rest many assumptions, and misrepresentations that her friends and family had spent years repeating, Priscilla’s nephew portrays his beloved aunt as a flawed and complex woman with great honesty and affection. Nicholas Shakespeare’s pursuit of the truth is exhaustive and wonderfully detailed. This was a compelling and fascinating book and as much of a page turner as many novels.
Priscilla: The hidden life of an Englishwoman in wartime France –is the first non-fiction read of 2014. I was especially bad at reading non-fiction last year and have been quite picky about which non-fiction books I select to read. This turned out to be an excellent book to begin my non-fiction reading of 2014. Often in the past I have been fascinated by biographical accounts of life during WWII, so I looked forward to this book, knowing it concerned one of my favourite subjects. I wasn’t disappointed; I found the book fascinating and hugely readable. Nicholas Shakespeare is a novelist (of who I confess I hadn’t heard) but I am sure that it is his experience as a novelist that makes this book so engaging.
Priscilla – Nicholas Shakespeare’s rather glamorous and mysterious aunt had lived for four years in a France under Nazi occupation, it was a time of which she never spoke. Nicholas had grown up under the impression that his aunt had been a member of the Resistance, that she had been tortured by the Germans. This turned out to be an inaccurate picture of what really happened during those dark years, of which few people who lived through it were prepared to speak. Nicholas Shakespeare remembered visiting Priscilla, living on a Sussex mushroom farm with her second husband Raymond during the 1950’s and 1960’s. She spent long hours in her bedroom, watching a television set that had been placed on an old padded bench at the end of the bed.
“I have a vivid memory of the room because at the foot of the double bed was the first television I had laid eyes on. As prosaic now as the taste of mushrooms, it was regarded, then, as the ultimate luxury to have a television set in your bedroom. The compact, bulbous screen rested on a wooden chest which had a padded top, striped black and white, and it was a special occasion as a boy to be allowed to sit and watch, sometimes with Priscilla. The earliest films I can recall were watched from my aunt’s bed which, even when she was not seated beside me, had the smell of the scent that she always wore, and which I associate with the characters whose dramas I tried to follow on screen. I cannot remember anything about this scent, except that it was strong; but I asked my mother and she said that it was Caleche by Hermes.”
It was this padded bench that was home to Priscilla’s personal belongings, letters, journals and photographs that while certainly not answering all the questions of Priscilla’s mysterious past – set her nephew on a quest to discover exactly who she was.
Priscilla was the eldest daughter of Stuart Petre Brodie Mais (1885–1975) – known as SPB – a writer and radio broadcaster whose voice in particular was well known during the war. Her relationship with her parents was often difficult – her father choosing a second family with his common law wife and their daughters (one of whom was Nicholas Shakespeare’s mother) over her, was something Priscilla was never really able to get past.
Following his aunts death in 1982 Nicholas Shakespeare became increasingly interested in his aunts mysterious past. How had she survived the Nazi occupation? – What had happened to her? Priscilla had lived in France for many years as a young girl; it had been where she met her great friend Gillian. In 1937 she met a minor French aristocrat Robert Doynel de la Sausserie on a train. She married him in December 1938, afterwards living with him in Paris as well as spending time at the family chateau in the French countryside. With the outbreak of war Robert dons the uniform he had worn during the First World War (he is a lot older than Priscilla) and leaves her with his family at Boisgrimot – the family home in the countryside.
When the occupying Nazi forces arrive in the summer of 1940 – Priscilla’s British passport puts her (and her French family) in great danger. She spends a few months interned at Besancon with other British women suffering terrible conditions and near starvation. A French doctor helped to secure her release in the early spring of 1941 – and Priscilla heads back to Paris. What happens to Priscilla between then and October 1944 when, following the allied liberation of Paris, Priscilla pulls up to the door of her friend Gillian’s Mayfair house in a taxi, was, for many years a mystery. As were some of her first words to her friend “I got out just in time.”
Using painstaking research Nicholas Shakespeare finally unravels the mystery of his aunt’s life in occupied France. His investigations lay to rest many assumptions, and misrepresentations that her friends and family had spent years repeating, Priscilla’s nephew portrays his beloved aunt as a flawed and complex woman with great honesty and affection. Nicholas Shakespeare’s pursuit of the truth is exhaustive and wonderfully detailed. This was a compelling and fascinating book and as much of a page turner as many novels.
April 25, 2023
PRISCILLA: THE HIDDEN LIFE OF AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN WARTIME FRANCE
Nicholas Shakespeare
WOW, was this long and slow! I know that every family has someone and this family had Priscilla. I almost think it is wrong for a family to come back and roll over the life that Priscilla painted for herself, there was a war and it was do or die. She might have been wrong but death is permanent. In addition, this is only what was told to him by others. I don't know if I can judge someone, a woman in the 1940s for actions she took to stay alive up close to the Nazis.
I will take exception to the slow and judgemental tone of the author.
2 stars
Happy Reading!
Nicholas Shakespeare
WOW, was this long and slow! I know that every family has someone and this family had Priscilla. I almost think it is wrong for a family to come back and roll over the life that Priscilla painted for herself, there was a war and it was do or die. She might have been wrong but death is permanent. In addition, this is only what was told to him by others. I don't know if I can judge someone, a woman in the 1940s for actions she took to stay alive up close to the Nazis.
I will take exception to the slow and judgemental tone of the author.
2 stars
Happy Reading!
January 21, 2014
A fascinating story of WE II. Many of us hope we would have been brave in circumstance s such as the German occupation of France but oftentimes it is not possible, especially if very young and alone! Very sad story and a terrible tragedy that followed one bad decision: not to leave France before the German invasion. Because I was born in 1942 I have always been fascinated by WE II about which I have no memory (and am most likely fortunate not to have those memories and worries about family in the service.) Although the author is forced imagine much of Priscilla's I found it fascinating and recommend it.
Here are twenty superfluous words in order to get my KINDLE to permit me to push continue and allow me to choose SAVE!!
Here are twenty superfluous words in order to get my KINDLE to permit me to push continue and allow me to choose SAVE!!
January 31, 2014
I received this ARC as a Goodreads First Reads win. This had the potential to be a pretty darned good biography, but the author was very unfocused in his execution of the narrative. I do understand that the author was rebuilding the story from letters, diaries, and even police reports, but he spent as much time telling us about the subject's friends, family and acquaintances, as he did about the subject herself. Entire chapters were focused solely on Priscilla's dad, sisters, Mom, Mom's boyfriends, Dad's common-law wife, best friend, several of the best friend's lovers, and Priscilla's many lovers. I do understand that given Priscilla's reticence to talk about her experiences during WW2, that the author has had to rebuild Priscilla's story from the stories of those around her who WOULD talk, but I didn't care to read the in depth details about the visits of Priscilla's best friend & lover to Parisian brothels, and the acts that were witnessed. I didn't see where these type of scenes added to the narrative of Priscilla's life. I'm not prude, I certainly appreciate a well written romance, but I don't see the appeal of reading the explicit details of a liaison between a prostitute and her customer, as witnessed by a second party.
The other aspect of this book that actually bothered me were the times that the author would make a claim that he didn't understand his aunt's, Priscilla's, dislike for a person or a scene, while telling the details of his Aunt's life. For example, he says that Priscilla had a strong dislike for her Mom's boyfriend, which "nobody understood" then proceeds to tell us that the boyfriend tried to rape Priscilla. For me, there's no doubt as to why Priscilla would dislike that guy. Also regarding Priscilla's dislike of men in uniform, being approached by police officers, etc, all of which must have been terrifying in the light of her experiences in Paris during WW2.
Third.... The author views his aunt from a sympathetic point of view, being somewhat upset that few people who were allegedly imprisoned don't remember Priscilla at all, and that his Aunt's story didn't more fully interest those outside his family. I'm under the impression that the author feels his aunt should have been held in such high esteem as various well known actress Hedy Lamar or Couture creatrix Coco Chanel. Fact of the matter remains, there were thousands of people in Paris, Priscilla was only one woman dealing with a cruel period of history, and was neither considerably better nor considerably worse than her fellow female citizens, and thus wouldn't stand out, nor be an exceptional example.
Throughout the book I DID feel sympathy for Priscilla and the hand she'd been dealt in having crummy, self-centered parents, and in the end, her lack of peace with herself and the struggles she faced in Paris during that time, or the lack of empathy she faced from her husband when it was obvious that Priscilla needed some emotional support particularly in her need for a spiritual advisor.
I wish I could give this biography more than 2 stars, but given the lack of focus and the definite cognitive dissonance moments, I just couldn't give this book more than 2 stars. I AM giving it 2 stars, rather than 1, because of the sympathy I felt for Priscilla and the lack of compassion she felt through her life. I guess I feel like she deserves some sympathy posthumously, since she couldn't get it in life.
The other aspect of this book that actually bothered me were the times that the author would make a claim that he didn't understand his aunt's, Priscilla's, dislike for a person or a scene, while telling the details of his Aunt's life. For example, he says that Priscilla had a strong dislike for her Mom's boyfriend, which "nobody understood" then proceeds to tell us that the boyfriend tried to rape Priscilla. For me, there's no doubt as to why Priscilla would dislike that guy. Also regarding Priscilla's dislike of men in uniform, being approached by police officers, etc, all of which must have been terrifying in the light of her experiences in Paris during WW2.
Third.... The author views his aunt from a sympathetic point of view, being somewhat upset that few people who were allegedly imprisoned don't remember Priscilla at all, and that his Aunt's story didn't more fully interest those outside his family. I'm under the impression that the author feels his aunt should have been held in such high esteem as various well known actress Hedy Lamar or Couture creatrix Coco Chanel. Fact of the matter remains, there were thousands of people in Paris, Priscilla was only one woman dealing with a cruel period of history, and was neither considerably better nor considerably worse than her fellow female citizens, and thus wouldn't stand out, nor be an exceptional example.
Throughout the book I DID feel sympathy for Priscilla and the hand she'd been dealt in having crummy, self-centered parents, and in the end, her lack of peace with herself and the struggles she faced in Paris during that time, or the lack of empathy she faced from her husband when it was obvious that Priscilla needed some emotional support particularly in her need for a spiritual advisor.
I wish I could give this biography more than 2 stars, but given the lack of focus and the definite cognitive dissonance moments, I just couldn't give this book more than 2 stars. I AM giving it 2 stars, rather than 1, because of the sympathy I felt for Priscilla and the lack of compassion she felt through her life. I guess I feel like she deserves some sympathy posthumously, since she couldn't get it in life.
December 21, 2015
This book was touching and fascinating for me. I love stories about people who are in complicated situations that they have difficulty explaining to outsiders.
The book gives a very vivid and realistic “tour” of occupied France under the Germans in the Second World War, through the life of Nicholas Shakespeare’s (the author’s) aunt. Much of this book reads like, and is sometimes even written like, a novel. Why was Priscilla, the author wondered, so reticent about talking about what happened during the war? Was it because she was so traumatized by the events that she couldn’t speak about them, or what? Was she in the Resistance, or was she tortured?
Well, actually arguably she was tortured, since she spent several months in a detention camp which wasn’t that much better than a concentration camp. But the truth turns out to be both more mundane, more complicated, and more interesting than this answer (were it true) would suggest. Shakespeare finds documents, letters, and articles which unravel most, but perhaps not absolutely all, of the answers. Priscilla wasn’t in the resistance, but she wasn’t exactly a collaborator either. What she did do, was to survive, and in the process encounters various lovers of French, German, and Belgian extraction, and of course her husband (who turned out not to be much help). It sounds vaguely romantic when I put her experiences in these terms, but to Priscilla it was mostly just frightening.
What was also interesting is just how much Priscilla kept to herself. Key aspects of her story were concealed from everyone, including her lovers and husbands. She desperately wanted to talk to people about what happened, and tried repeatedly (without success) to write about various aspects of her experiences during the war. The public just wasn’t interested in war stories at that point; they had lived through it. One could imagine that she might have told her story to a priest via a confession, but other than that possibility, no human being during her life — not even her husbands, lovers, or close friends — heard the “good parts” of Shakespeare’s narrative. Shakespeare discovered all of this through examination of Priscilla’s letters and writings, and those of her friends, among other documents.
The question we could ask afterwards was, would this book have been better if it were just fictionalized and made into a novel? Perhaps, but in a novel it would be much more difficult to understand Priscilla’s shame and loneliness with her extraordinary story. It’s probably improper to speak of Priscilla’s attitude towards her wartime experiences as “shame,” since I don’t think she was ashamed of her actions, nor did she actually have any reason to be. But — what actually happened is just so hard to explain to outsiders, and she was never able to really find a way to express it, until this book did it for her.
Reading other Goodreads reviews of this book, a number of people criticized the book saying that it basically was insufficiently exciting. These people, I think, would have preferred a novel: hopefully, a novel with some chase scenes, buildings being blown up, and perhaps some more breathless detail with the romantic scenes. Priscilla reminds us that history isn't like that; sometimes what seems obvious in hindsight was not obvious when it was still in the future, and sometimes it is difficult to recover what actually happened because of the way we "want" to remember things.
The book gives a very vivid and realistic “tour” of occupied France under the Germans in the Second World War, through the life of Nicholas Shakespeare’s (the author’s) aunt. Much of this book reads like, and is sometimes even written like, a novel. Why was Priscilla, the author wondered, so reticent about talking about what happened during the war? Was it because she was so traumatized by the events that she couldn’t speak about them, or what? Was she in the Resistance, or was she tortured?
Well, actually arguably she was tortured, since she spent several months in a detention camp which wasn’t that much better than a concentration camp. But the truth turns out to be both more mundane, more complicated, and more interesting than this answer (were it true) would suggest. Shakespeare finds documents, letters, and articles which unravel most, but perhaps not absolutely all, of the answers. Priscilla wasn’t in the resistance, but she wasn’t exactly a collaborator either. What she did do, was to survive, and in the process encounters various lovers of French, German, and Belgian extraction, and of course her husband (who turned out not to be much help). It sounds vaguely romantic when I put her experiences in these terms, but to Priscilla it was mostly just frightening.
What was also interesting is just how much Priscilla kept to herself. Key aspects of her story were concealed from everyone, including her lovers and husbands. She desperately wanted to talk to people about what happened, and tried repeatedly (without success) to write about various aspects of her experiences during the war. The public just wasn’t interested in war stories at that point; they had lived through it. One could imagine that she might have told her story to a priest via a confession, but other than that possibility, no human being during her life — not even her husbands, lovers, or close friends — heard the “good parts” of Shakespeare’s narrative. Shakespeare discovered all of this through examination of Priscilla’s letters and writings, and those of her friends, among other documents.
The question we could ask afterwards was, would this book have been better if it were just fictionalized and made into a novel? Perhaps, but in a novel it would be much more difficult to understand Priscilla’s shame and loneliness with her extraordinary story. It’s probably improper to speak of Priscilla’s attitude towards her wartime experiences as “shame,” since I don’t think she was ashamed of her actions, nor did she actually have any reason to be. But — what actually happened is just so hard to explain to outsiders, and she was never able to really find a way to express it, until this book did it for her.
Reading other Goodreads reviews of this book, a number of people criticized the book saying that it basically was insufficiently exciting. These people, I think, would have preferred a novel: hopefully, a novel with some chase scenes, buildings being blown up, and perhaps some more breathless detail with the romantic scenes. Priscilla reminds us that history isn't like that; sometimes what seems obvious in hindsight was not obvious when it was still in the future, and sometimes it is difficult to recover what actually happened because of the way we "want" to remember things.
June 11, 2019
A bit of a tricky read as I had confused this book with the story of an English woman behind French lines who joined the Resistance. And then Pris....didnt join the Resistance. But that helped me really challenge my thoughts about her actions.
The author - the subject's nephew - straight out writes that she shouldnt be judged for her "sluttishness" b/c no one who goes through the Occupation can judge someone who has. And that is a very fair point. I would never judge a woman on whom she chose to share a bed with, and if this is what she had to do for her survival, well then, that is what she had to do.
Except, that isnt what she had to do. She could have just returned to her older, impotent husband. She would have been mostly poor (the family actually ate well at the chateau Boisgrimot) and cold, but she would have been as safe as the rest of the family. But, as Shakespeare points out, she stayed with men - mostly German, and some of whom seemed to be very high up in the black market enterprise known as Otto - "acquiring" art for Hitler and Goering - b/c she was young and wanted to feel alive. So, she ate caviar in restaurants and went SKIING wearing a lovely fur coat (one can only wonder at the former owner of that coat...). So no, I dont judge her for the sex, but living with these me (who all seemed to fall flat in love with her...she must have had an amazing "Occupation" personality.) and enjoying the spoils of their profession? That I do judge a wee bit.
However, she is an interesting character, and really one of the first tales I have read about a 'colabo'.
Now, the writing was just - - well, click bait. New chapter, "Could Goering's best friend be the Otto Pris was in love with??", twenty pages later, "No. A different Otto."
Also, paragraphs would start with subject we only learn about at the end - it makes one scan past pages, thinking something (or someone) was missed. And sometimes, the new character was just dropped in with no explanation. Also, in describing Pris' roommates in prison, Shakespeare writes "Miss Stanley, a lesbian with wonderful legs..." - - - what do either of those facts have to do with the story he is telling? Nothing. It was very similar to when I turned a page, and there is Pris, laying on the grass, bare except for some rather lovely looking knickers. The author asks if this pic was taken when she was fleeing on a 100 mile bicycle journey to Paris, getting straffed by Allied pilots. Yes, Im sure that inbetween dodging from bullets, she and her companion ("was she sleeping with him too??? Read on to find out!), made love and then lay sleepily in a field. And one had the forthright of mind to bring and then take a pic. Include the pic, fine, but find a more connected place to put it. Shakespeare also makes the claim that Pris' infidelities where what actually killed her MIL. Complete supposition with no proof. The Nazis had conquered France, her sons were who knows where, but yes, this is what finally did her in.
Super interesting topic, but the writing almost did me in. It was like reading in spirals.
The author - the subject's nephew - straight out writes that she shouldnt be judged for her "sluttishness" b/c no one who goes through the Occupation can judge someone who has. And that is a very fair point. I would never judge a woman on whom she chose to share a bed with, and if this is what she had to do for her survival, well then, that is what she had to do.
Except, that isnt what she had to do. She could have just returned to her older, impotent husband. She would have been mostly poor (the family actually ate well at the chateau Boisgrimot) and cold, but she would have been as safe as the rest of the family. But, as Shakespeare points out, she stayed with men - mostly German, and some of whom seemed to be very high up in the black market enterprise known as Otto - "acquiring" art for Hitler and Goering - b/c she was young and wanted to feel alive. So, she ate caviar in restaurants and went SKIING wearing a lovely fur coat (one can only wonder at the former owner of that coat...). So no, I dont judge her for the sex, but living with these me (who all seemed to fall flat in love with her...she must have had an amazing "Occupation" personality.) and enjoying the spoils of their profession? That I do judge a wee bit.
However, she is an interesting character, and really one of the first tales I have read about a 'colabo'.
Now, the writing was just - - well, click bait. New chapter, "Could Goering's best friend be the Otto Pris was in love with??", twenty pages later, "No. A different Otto."
Also, paragraphs would start with subject we only learn about at the end - it makes one scan past pages, thinking something (or someone) was missed. And sometimes, the new character was just dropped in with no explanation. Also, in describing Pris' roommates in prison, Shakespeare writes "Miss Stanley, a lesbian with wonderful legs..." - - - what do either of those facts have to do with the story he is telling? Nothing. It was very similar to when I turned a page, and there is Pris, laying on the grass, bare except for some rather lovely looking knickers. The author asks if this pic was taken when she was fleeing on a 100 mile bicycle journey to Paris, getting straffed by Allied pilots. Yes, Im sure that inbetween dodging from bullets, she and her companion ("was she sleeping with him too??? Read on to find out!), made love and then lay sleepily in a field. And one had the forthright of mind to bring and then take a pic. Include the pic, fine, but find a more connected place to put it. Shakespeare also makes the claim that Pris' infidelities where what actually killed her MIL. Complete supposition with no proof. The Nazis had conquered France, her sons were who knows where, but yes, this is what finally did her in.
Super interesting topic, but the writing almost did me in. It was like reading in spirals.
March 7, 2016
Priscilla
Nicholas Shakespeare set out to try and discover the truth about his aunt Priscilla and her life in Paris during the years of the German Occupation from 1940 until 1944. The result is this biography. It is an enthralling tale but is, at times, extremely difficult to follow because of the numerous personalities that drift in and out of the narrative. Because he did not have access to many of his Aunt's personal records, he had to construct his narrative by relying on sources from the many men and women who knew his aunt during this period. Some of the recollections of those whom he connects to his Aunt are tenuous to say the least, and Shakespeare expects the reader to make a leap of faith in order to accept his version of the events.
I find it difficult to pin down my evaluation of his aunt as a person. His portrait of her is very fair, Shakespeare holds nothing back. On the one hand, I see Priscilla as cold, calculating, narcissistic and selfish woman and on the other, as a woman who never grew up, who spent her life searching for the love she was denied as a child. Abandoned first by her mother (a truly selfish bitch) and later by her father, (the well-known BBC commentator SPB Mais) she was bundled across the channel to spend her schooldays in Paris and was later trapped there when the Germans invaded In May 1940. However, the by-now young woman loved her life in Paris, and was unwilling to travel back to Britain with her best friend, Gillian.
Her disastrous marriage to Viscount Robert and many love affairs are examined in great detail. But it was the Shakespeare's research and narrative on the thugs and criminals who ran the Black Market in Paris during the first few years of the Occupation that I found truly fascinating. The picture he paints of this murky underworld, with its spiders web of connections to the Nazis, the Abwehr, the government in Vichy and the 'collabos' is enthralling and frightening. It is no wonder that successive French governments following the end of the war tried to destroy all record of France's collaboration with the German occupiers, preferring instead to construct an alternative narrative of the bravery of the relative few (until the Allied landings in June 1944) who joined the Resistance.
This book really dragged for the last few chapters and I almost skimmed, I was tired of Priscilla, and I didn't really care what happened to her.
Nicholas Shakespeare set out to try and discover the truth about his aunt Priscilla and her life in Paris during the years of the German Occupation from 1940 until 1944. The result is this biography. It is an enthralling tale but is, at times, extremely difficult to follow because of the numerous personalities that drift in and out of the narrative. Because he did not have access to many of his Aunt's personal records, he had to construct his narrative by relying on sources from the many men and women who knew his aunt during this period. Some of the recollections of those whom he connects to his Aunt are tenuous to say the least, and Shakespeare expects the reader to make a leap of faith in order to accept his version of the events.
I find it difficult to pin down my evaluation of his aunt as a person. His portrait of her is very fair, Shakespeare holds nothing back. On the one hand, I see Priscilla as cold, calculating, narcissistic and selfish woman and on the other, as a woman who never grew up, who spent her life searching for the love she was denied as a child. Abandoned first by her mother (a truly selfish bitch) and later by her father, (the well-known BBC commentator SPB Mais) she was bundled across the channel to spend her schooldays in Paris and was later trapped there when the Germans invaded In May 1940. However, the by-now young woman loved her life in Paris, and was unwilling to travel back to Britain with her best friend, Gillian.
Her disastrous marriage to Viscount Robert and many love affairs are examined in great detail. But it was the Shakespeare's research and narrative on the thugs and criminals who ran the Black Market in Paris during the first few years of the Occupation that I found truly fascinating. The picture he paints of this murky underworld, with its spiders web of connections to the Nazis, the Abwehr, the government in Vichy and the 'collabos' is enthralling and frightening. It is no wonder that successive French governments following the end of the war tried to destroy all record of France's collaboration with the German occupiers, preferring instead to construct an alternative narrative of the bravery of the relative few (until the Allied landings in June 1944) who joined the Resistance.
This book really dragged for the last few chapters and I almost skimmed, I was tired of Priscilla, and I didn't really care what happened to her.
November 20, 2013
Priscilla is the kind of book that makes me wonder why I ever read fiction at all. Here is the true story of a woman who spent World War II in Nazi-occupied France, as a British passport holder and the young wife of a minor French nobleman. How she survived is the subject of the book. Author Nicholas Shakespeare never gave much thought to his aunt's past, and she never said anything about it. But after she died, he found some information about those war years that made him want to investigate further. His research took him to the archives of French, British, and American government records, police departments, friends, surviving family members of friends, libraries, and more.
The story is as much about the hunt for the story as it is about Priscilla's story itself. There's drama and love and death and murder and torture and daring escapes. I found myself alternately sympathizing with and despising Priscilla. When times are tough, and living as an enemy national in Vichy France was undeniably tough for Priscilla, you hope you will rise to the occasion and be heroic, or at least be quietly brave. You hope you don't betray your friends or lose your moral compass. But until it happens to you, you can't know. During war time, many were heroic. And those same people might have been less than heroic the very next day. Lots of people refused to talk about the war after it was over and they returned home. Maybe what they saw was too horrific to talk about. Maybe what they did was too difficult to face.
Priscilla is a heck of a story. It does drag a bit at times, and there were a few detours into subjects that I didn't find as gripping as Nicholas Shakespeare did. But overall, this was better than a novel, with all the relationships and drama, and big questions that you'd find in a novel, but as far as we can know, it really happened.
The story is as much about the hunt for the story as it is about Priscilla's story itself. There's drama and love and death and murder and torture and daring escapes. I found myself alternately sympathizing with and despising Priscilla. When times are tough, and living as an enemy national in Vichy France was undeniably tough for Priscilla, you hope you will rise to the occasion and be heroic, or at least be quietly brave. You hope you don't betray your friends or lose your moral compass. But until it happens to you, you can't know. During war time, many were heroic. And those same people might have been less than heroic the very next day. Lots of people refused to talk about the war after it was over and they returned home. Maybe what they saw was too horrific to talk about. Maybe what they did was too difficult to face.
Priscilla is a heck of a story. It does drag a bit at times, and there were a few detours into subjects that I didn't find as gripping as Nicholas Shakespeare did. But overall, this was better than a novel, with all the relationships and drama, and big questions that you'd find in a novel, but as far as we can know, it really happened.
November 5, 2017
Sorry this book was about a slut born in England to parents who were unfaithful so she went to France and slutted around with a friend who did the same, during the German occupation of Paris. She then returns to England married a husband who beat her.
I could not get in to this besides being 450 pages of 6 point printing a required read for Garfield Book Club.
Amazon:Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France by Nicholas Shakespeare is a transcendent work of narrative nonfiction in the vein of The Hare with Amber Eyes.
When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunk full of his late aunt’s personal belongings, he was unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals and photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy during World War II.
As a young boy, Shakespeare had always believed that his aunt was a member of the Resistance and had been tortured by the Germans. The truth turned out to be far more complicated.
Piecing together fragments of his aunt’s remarkable and tragic story, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.
I could not get in to this besides being 450 pages of 6 point printing a required read for Garfield Book Club.
Amazon:Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France by Nicholas Shakespeare is a transcendent work of narrative nonfiction in the vein of The Hare with Amber Eyes.
When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunk full of his late aunt’s personal belongings, he was unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals and photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy during World War II.
As a young boy, Shakespeare had always believed that his aunt was a member of the Resistance and had been tortured by the Germans. The truth turned out to be far more complicated.
Piecing together fragments of his aunt’s remarkable and tragic story, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.
August 21, 2014
The premise of this book I found to be very fascinating. Priscilla’s nephew Nicholas Shakespeare is both novelist and a biographer. He is aware that biographical truth does not lie only in the facts: there is also the mysterious life to pin down. He discovers his aunt’s stash of letters and unmarked photographs that sparked his hunt for the identities of her lovers and associates, which helped him, create this book. He dryly wrote an interesting novel. It is slow and at times reads like a history book.
This is another book that demonstrates what people do to stay alive during a war. Perhaps the struggle for survival is rarely as noble as comfortable peacetime generations might wish it to be. Maybe Shakespeare was more shocked into this story because he believed his aunt had spent the war in terrified hiding in occupied France, and most of the time incarcerated in a concentration camp. Therefore, her letters led him on a detective course for the truth, one that we did not have to follow. There are far better books out there on the same subject.
This is another book that demonstrates what people do to stay alive during a war. Perhaps the struggle for survival is rarely as noble as comfortable peacetime generations might wish it to be. Maybe Shakespeare was more shocked into this story because he believed his aunt had spent the war in terrified hiding in occupied France, and most of the time incarcerated in a concentration camp. Therefore, her letters led him on a detective course for the truth, one that we did not have to follow. There are far better books out there on the same subject.
March 25, 2014
I found this an interesting story of a flawed and seemingly empty woman who had little purpose in life. Someone who was blown about by the winds of fortune and did not seem to make anything of herself. She seems a very passive character who allowed men to do with her what they wanted. The author rounds out the character with a brief history of war-time Paris, and a look into the lives of Nazi collaborators who dealt in the black market. These were the men Priscilla ended up with due to no income or profession of her own. (A warning for all of us!). Also of course she was an enemy alien! I did feel that sadly there just simply was not enough information about her life to round out the whole story but what there is tells us of a sad and lonely woman who never succeeded in getting what she wanted- loving parents, a child of her own and income and success of her own making. The book tended to drag in the middle, and the uncaptioned photos were a bit odd as the reader has to guess who they are of.
April 16, 2016
An unusual tale of a nephew's investigation into the war-time life of his late Aunt, Priscilla, uncovering food for thought as pretty, insecure and perhaps a little shallow but not unsympathetic Priscilla is tossed on the tides of change in France before, during and after WW II. The story is told through the evidence of Priscilla's unfinished literary efforts and personal letters as well as the usual sleuthing in archives and visits to friends and relatives. It smack of real life, inhabited by imperfect people and reaching few conclusions. You might say it casts a sideways view on the usual perspectives of the tragedy and heroism of World War II by placing the reader in the midst of great events but on the sidelines, trying to survive with a limited skill set and resources. A mild but strangely disturbing biography of someone neither good nor evil, weak nor strong, who reveals the underbrush of history through the perspective of a bystander.
March 2, 2014
What would you have done if you lived in France during the occupation? Would you bravely join the resistance? Would you have collaborated? Would you have done what you had to survive?
Nicholas Shakespeare recreates the life of his aunt, Priscilla, during the occupation of France in World War II. She was a beautiful, young British citizen who was married to a French citizen. Her life was upended when the Nazi's invaded and in danger when Brittan declared war on Germany.
Priscilla is not what her nephew thought, her friends expected or history assumes. An interesting story of a woman who lived in fear yet never stopped searching for love and safety. Reading this autobiography really makes you ponder the question of what you would have done in the same circumstances and how you would have lived with the aftermath.
Nicholas Shakespeare recreates the life of his aunt, Priscilla, during the occupation of France in World War II. She was a beautiful, young British citizen who was married to a French citizen. Her life was upended when the Nazi's invaded and in danger when Brittan declared war on Germany.
Priscilla is not what her nephew thought, her friends expected or history assumes. An interesting story of a woman who lived in fear yet never stopped searching for love and safety. Reading this autobiography really makes you ponder the question of what you would have done in the same circumstances and how you would have lived with the aftermath.
February 18, 2015
This book intrigued me. Women's lives in World War 2 have long been an interest of mine, but this story was quite different from accounts I've read before. Nicholas Shakespeare, long fascinated by his glamorous aunt, living in the middle of nowhere on a mushroom farm, is given a box of documents by her daughter. What slowly unravels is the story of Priscilla's life, before, during and after the war. Before writing the book, Nicholas seems to be in awe of Priscilla, and what is so deeply interesting about this book is the way he weaves in his research and his own personal responses to the various discoveries he makes about Priscilla's life. It seems so easy for people to judge one other, and what Nicholas brings up time and again is the fact that we can never truly understand another's situation and the choices they make unless we have been in similar situations ourselves.
October 6, 2016
A really compelling book of an English woman living in occupied France. Also the story of her nephew trying to discover the previous life of his troubled and quiet aunty. I was sad to read that other reviewers felt that Priscilla was uninteresting and dependent on her looks, but we don't really know who she was or what she felt about her life...her story is presented and interpreted through her lovers, her friend (who had reason to feel betrayed by Priscilla) and a compassionate nephew...but not Priscilla. She survived doing what she had to do, we don't know her feelings or her motives behind what she did, but her decline in later life tells us that she was not unaffected. It was a fascinating read.
May 6, 2018
Very long slow moving book written by this woman’s nephew after Priscilla’s death thru her papers and a few friends who were alive at the time. Just seemed to never end as she lived a life in France during the occupation. She never wished to discuss this time in her life and after reading what he uncovered, it should have stayed buried. Nothing she could be proud of but understandable due to the circumstances. I would not recommend spending the time reading about her escapades with the many men, including a good friend of Hitlers. Not sure why I even finished this book.
January 26, 2014
Quite simply, a stunning account of an ordinary woman trying to survive in Occupied France. But this is not a story of a valiant Resistance fighter, or someone who risked her life to hide Jews. It is something much darker.
Full review here:
http://bestofww2.blogspot.com/2014/01...
Full review here:
http://bestofww2.blogspot.com/2014/01...
July 12, 2023
An excellent book about a remarkable woman. Highly recommended.
July 29, 2020
In his book Priscilla, The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France the English novelist Nicholas Shakespeare takes up the subject of family history. The title character, Priscilla, was Shakespeare’s aunt. Throughout the first decades of his life, she was to him and other family members a mysterious, glamorous figure, with a hint of romanticism and intrigue. It was rumored she fought with the French resistance when she lived in occupied France (1940-44) after marrying an older French vicomte just before the outbreak of war. But one day Shakespeare comes upon many of her old letters, diaries, and photographs, and finds that his enigmatic aunt was in fact a much more flawed person than everyone had been led to believe.
To say that Priscilla was flawed, however, is ignoring the context in which she was forced to survive: a foreign national living in an enemy-occupied country with no family to support her (her French husband Robert was sent off to the front and captured early in the war). People have no idea how they will respond in trying circumstances, unless they themselves have been so tested. My first novel Above the Water deals with a similar situation of a woman (Viktoria) trying to survive a wartime occupation and put food on the table not only for herself but for children as well. I therefore read Shakespeare’s account with great interest. Parts of the book drag, and the cast of characters is sometimes difficult to follow, but I give Shakespeare high marks for highlighting the issue of moral ambiguity in times of upheaval, when the rhythms of everyday life are replaced by a constant diet of fear and terror.
What follows for Priscilla after her husband has been taken from her is internment in a horrid camp for displaced women of non-French citizenship, life on the lam in Paris (after being released from the camp), a series of lovers (French civilians and Nazi officers), and ultimately an unhappy life in post-war England with an overbearing husband with two daughters from his first marriage that she is forced to raise. She never spoke of her four years in occupied France to her family, which is why it became such a big mystery to them. After Priscilla dies (in 1982), and Shakespeare finds her trove of letters and relates what he found to his mother (Priscilla’s younger half-sister), she answers unperturbedly, “Nothing would surprise me in the war. Absolutely nothing. It’s a question of survival. You never knew who you were going to meet and you lived from day to day. I’m sure that you would have collaborated if you had wanted to live.”
This is the essence of Priscilla’s (and in my novel, Viktoria’s) dilemma. You do what you have to do to survive in wartime. Many of us would like to presume that we would have served in the resistance or sheltered Jews fleeing the Nazis, but the fact is, if it came to a choice of keeping your family safe or risking their lives for a greater cause, many of us would give pause. The only area where we can fault Priscilla is the fact that she could have returned to her husband Robert (after his release) and lived out the war in the French countryside, but she felt constricted by the small village environment and the judgmental character of her French in-laws. She chose to return to Paris and live for a while illegally, which is when she found it advantageous to possess German lovers. As she wrote in one of her journal entries after her release from the terrible conditions of the camp, “I was hungry for pleasure.” One can hardly blame a vivacious young woman (or man) in the prime of their lives wanting the same, wartime or no.
To say that Priscilla was flawed, however, is ignoring the context in which she was forced to survive: a foreign national living in an enemy-occupied country with no family to support her (her French husband Robert was sent off to the front and captured early in the war). People have no idea how they will respond in trying circumstances, unless they themselves have been so tested. My first novel Above the Water deals with a similar situation of a woman (Viktoria) trying to survive a wartime occupation and put food on the table not only for herself but for children as well. I therefore read Shakespeare’s account with great interest. Parts of the book drag, and the cast of characters is sometimes difficult to follow, but I give Shakespeare high marks for highlighting the issue of moral ambiguity in times of upheaval, when the rhythms of everyday life are replaced by a constant diet of fear and terror.
What follows for Priscilla after her husband has been taken from her is internment in a horrid camp for displaced women of non-French citizenship, life on the lam in Paris (after being released from the camp), a series of lovers (French civilians and Nazi officers), and ultimately an unhappy life in post-war England with an overbearing husband with two daughters from his first marriage that she is forced to raise. She never spoke of her four years in occupied France to her family, which is why it became such a big mystery to them. After Priscilla dies (in 1982), and Shakespeare finds her trove of letters and relates what he found to his mother (Priscilla’s younger half-sister), she answers unperturbedly, “Nothing would surprise me in the war. Absolutely nothing. It’s a question of survival. You never knew who you were going to meet and you lived from day to day. I’m sure that you would have collaborated if you had wanted to live.”
This is the essence of Priscilla’s (and in my novel, Viktoria’s) dilemma. You do what you have to do to survive in wartime. Many of us would like to presume that we would have served in the resistance or sheltered Jews fleeing the Nazis, but the fact is, if it came to a choice of keeping your family safe or risking their lives for a greater cause, many of us would give pause. The only area where we can fault Priscilla is the fact that she could have returned to her husband Robert (after his release) and lived out the war in the French countryside, but she felt constricted by the small village environment and the judgmental character of her French in-laws. She chose to return to Paris and live for a while illegally, which is when she found it advantageous to possess German lovers. As she wrote in one of her journal entries after her release from the terrible conditions of the camp, “I was hungry for pleasure.” One can hardly blame a vivacious young woman (or man) in the prime of their lives wanting the same, wartime or no.
October 24, 2015
Quotable:
“I always think that books spoil the look of a house,” said Mrs. Snow.
Small details, Gillian believed, can destroy relationships quicker than big knocks. Her husband’s brother… had left his wife because of the way she slurped her soup.
[P]eople who had not gone through the Occupation should not judge those who had. Even today, new facts emerge which are not to the credit of certain people, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. There were heroes and there were traitors, there were brave men and others who preferred to make a great deal of money out of the black market. An enemy occupation does not always bring out the best in people.
The impulse to cast people as heroes or traitors ignores the muddled and shifting reality of the overwhelming part of the population who drifted nervously with the stream; prudent, unaffiliated, not committing themselves to resistance or collaboration, not fitting into a neat moral category, playing a number of ambiguous and provisional roles, ready at any instant to change direction with the current.
Elisabeth Haden-Guest courted greater risks with a young SS officer billeted on her in a chateau near Saint-Briac. .. ‘We became lovers: it was his first time. We made love often, with urgency and passion.’ If discovered, she knew that it might mean death for both of them. ‘I remember so well how death seemed worth it…’ Her love life, as with two of Haden-Guest’s previous lovers, both French, was predicated, like Priscilla’s, ‘on the fact that we had no hope of a future because in the future there was war and death. My relationships with them were entirely based on catching the last bit of life and poetry and music and Christmas, drinking it in and storing it up for the time to come of coldness and aloneness. I shall never forget or regret the intensity of those lovers born out of despair.’
In Sainteny, it was forbidden to talk in more than groups of three. If Yvonne Finel saw villagers assemble, she strode up and demanded to know what they were discussing. Monsieur Philippe had draped white nets over his gooseberry bushes. The Germans suspected that he was signaling to enemy piolets and arrested him, summoning Finel to judge. He explained that he was putting up the nets to stop birds eating the gooseberries. True or false? The Germans asked Finel. ‘No, he’s lying,’ she replied. Monsieur Philippe was executed.
‘I swore I would never again take any woman seriously – and here you are beginning to nestle down snugly under my skin, bother and confound you.’
‘For the next 12 months I thrived on gin, vodka, brandy, Pernod, and I remember little of what occurred.’ Each new stage of Priscilla’s decline was inexorable. She was in an appalling state, drinking to the point of vomiting. She made a strenuous effort for three months to survive on wine alone, and failed. ‘She was hooked,’ wrote Gillian. ‘She told me that unless she stopped drinking Raymond would end the marriage.’
The nadir was reached on October evening in 1965. Raymond was President of the Mushroom Growers Association that year and host of the annual dinner in Worthing at which Priscilla passed out with a black eye. ‘Had a terrific row with Raymond at the end of dinner on the subject of my drinking and I feel our marriage may have been nearer to the brink than I thought. He thinks that some of our friends now shun us because of “unpredictable” habits.’
“I always think that books spoil the look of a house,” said Mrs. Snow.
Small details, Gillian believed, can destroy relationships quicker than big knocks. Her husband’s brother… had left his wife because of the way she slurped her soup.
[P]eople who had not gone through the Occupation should not judge those who had. Even today, new facts emerge which are not to the credit of certain people, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. There were heroes and there were traitors, there were brave men and others who preferred to make a great deal of money out of the black market. An enemy occupation does not always bring out the best in people.
The impulse to cast people as heroes or traitors ignores the muddled and shifting reality of the overwhelming part of the population who drifted nervously with the stream; prudent, unaffiliated, not committing themselves to resistance or collaboration, not fitting into a neat moral category, playing a number of ambiguous and provisional roles, ready at any instant to change direction with the current.
Elisabeth Haden-Guest courted greater risks with a young SS officer billeted on her in a chateau near Saint-Briac. .. ‘We became lovers: it was his first time. We made love often, with urgency and passion.’ If discovered, she knew that it might mean death for both of them. ‘I remember so well how death seemed worth it…’ Her love life, as with two of Haden-Guest’s previous lovers, both French, was predicated, like Priscilla’s, ‘on the fact that we had no hope of a future because in the future there was war and death. My relationships with them were entirely based on catching the last bit of life and poetry and music and Christmas, drinking it in and storing it up for the time to come of coldness and aloneness. I shall never forget or regret the intensity of those lovers born out of despair.’
In Sainteny, it was forbidden to talk in more than groups of three. If Yvonne Finel saw villagers assemble, she strode up and demanded to know what they were discussing. Monsieur Philippe had draped white nets over his gooseberry bushes. The Germans suspected that he was signaling to enemy piolets and arrested him, summoning Finel to judge. He explained that he was putting up the nets to stop birds eating the gooseberries. True or false? The Germans asked Finel. ‘No, he’s lying,’ she replied. Monsieur Philippe was executed.
‘I swore I would never again take any woman seriously – and here you are beginning to nestle down snugly under my skin, bother and confound you.’
‘For the next 12 months I thrived on gin, vodka, brandy, Pernod, and I remember little of what occurred.’ Each new stage of Priscilla’s decline was inexorable. She was in an appalling state, drinking to the point of vomiting. She made a strenuous effort for three months to survive on wine alone, and failed. ‘She was hooked,’ wrote Gillian. ‘She told me that unless she stopped drinking Raymond would end the marriage.’
The nadir was reached on October evening in 1965. Raymond was President of the Mushroom Growers Association that year and host of the annual dinner in Worthing at which Priscilla passed out with a black eye. ‘Had a terrific row with Raymond at the end of dinner on the subject of my drinking and I feel our marriage may have been nearer to the brink than I thought. He thinks that some of our friends now shun us because of “unpredictable” habits.’
February 12, 2014
Source: Free copy from Harper in exchange for a review.
Summary:
Priscilla, has tested my ability to write a fair and balanced review. My dad was in the D-Day invasion on Normandy Beach. Dad was also in the Battle of the Bulge. He went to Paris a few days after the war ended and attended a class at the University of Paris. He witnessed French women who'd been ostracized. Their shaven heads were a mark on their body because of sexual relationships they'd had with German soldiers.
I'll never forget what daddy told me, "Annette, you don't know what those poor people went through. Those women may not have had a choice, they may have done this thing because they needed food."
It is with a nonjudgmental attitude that I'll write this review.
Nicholas Shakespeare (I love this name), is the nephew of Priscilla. As a young boy and during the years he was growing up, his aunt was a mystery. The rest of the family knew little about her "lost years" in Paris. Priscilla's best friend Gillian, was unaware of what exactly Priscilla had been doing. After her death, her step-daughter gave Nicholas a few of Priscilla's possessions. After searching through these treasures, he had more questions than when he began. Through painstaking research, traveling to France, interviewing those people who'd known his aunt (if they were still living), and pouring through any available archive material in France, he began to piece together Priscilla's hidden years during the occupation of France.
Nicholas Shakespeare, began Priscilla's biography at the onset of her parent's marriage. Priscilla's father was a well-known BBC radio broadcaster in later years. Her parent's marriage was dysfunctional from the start. Her mother Doris moved off to live a lavish party-girl lifestyle when Priscilla was a youth. The building blocks of Priscilla's life was short-changed by inept parents. Priscilla grew up to be an emotionally insecure person. She desperately sought love, but with the wrong people.
My Thoughts:
1. Priscilla was a needy, clingy, insecure, anxious, dependent, superficial, fearful, person. And this was before the German Occupation of France. She chose to stay in France. She chose to marry and get mixed up with men she had relationships with. She chose the female friends she associated with. But, we cannot personally interview Priscilla. The book is pieced together by her nephew. I believe he did his best, but there are a couple of areas uncertain. Some responsibility must rest with her for choices she deliberately made. She was not a wise person, not savvy; then, add the fear of arrest and interrogation or death, she was crippled mentally and emotionally.
2. Priscilla, gave me another view and perspective of the year's in Paris under German Occupation.
3. I was not aware until reading this book of people in France not wanting to talk about the German Occupation.
4. I loved it that the author pulled me into the story. This is a non-fiction work, but neither dry nor suffocating in its narrative.
5. I believe Priscilla spent much of her time numb. Numb to all that had happened and was happening. She bounced off of one problem and on to another, never taking the time to rationally think, she only reacted.
6. I had moments while reading this book where I wanted to shake Priscilla, other moments where I felt she needed a quiet embrace.
Summary:
Priscilla, has tested my ability to write a fair and balanced review. My dad was in the D-Day invasion on Normandy Beach. Dad was also in the Battle of the Bulge. He went to Paris a few days after the war ended and attended a class at the University of Paris. He witnessed French women who'd been ostracized. Their shaven heads were a mark on their body because of sexual relationships they'd had with German soldiers.
I'll never forget what daddy told me, "Annette, you don't know what those poor people went through. Those women may not have had a choice, they may have done this thing because they needed food."
It is with a nonjudgmental attitude that I'll write this review.
Nicholas Shakespeare (I love this name), is the nephew of Priscilla. As a young boy and during the years he was growing up, his aunt was a mystery. The rest of the family knew little about her "lost years" in Paris. Priscilla's best friend Gillian, was unaware of what exactly Priscilla had been doing. After her death, her step-daughter gave Nicholas a few of Priscilla's possessions. After searching through these treasures, he had more questions than when he began. Through painstaking research, traveling to France, interviewing those people who'd known his aunt (if they were still living), and pouring through any available archive material in France, he began to piece together Priscilla's hidden years during the occupation of France.
Nicholas Shakespeare, began Priscilla's biography at the onset of her parent's marriage. Priscilla's father was a well-known BBC radio broadcaster in later years. Her parent's marriage was dysfunctional from the start. Her mother Doris moved off to live a lavish party-girl lifestyle when Priscilla was a youth. The building blocks of Priscilla's life was short-changed by inept parents. Priscilla grew up to be an emotionally insecure person. She desperately sought love, but with the wrong people.
My Thoughts:
1. Priscilla was a needy, clingy, insecure, anxious, dependent, superficial, fearful, person. And this was before the German Occupation of France. She chose to stay in France. She chose to marry and get mixed up with men she had relationships with. She chose the female friends she associated with. But, we cannot personally interview Priscilla. The book is pieced together by her nephew. I believe he did his best, but there are a couple of areas uncertain. Some responsibility must rest with her for choices she deliberately made. She was not a wise person, not savvy; then, add the fear of arrest and interrogation or death, she was crippled mentally and emotionally.
2. Priscilla, gave me another view and perspective of the year's in Paris under German Occupation.
3. I was not aware until reading this book of people in France not wanting to talk about the German Occupation.
4. I loved it that the author pulled me into the story. This is a non-fiction work, but neither dry nor suffocating in its narrative.
5. I believe Priscilla spent much of her time numb. Numb to all that had happened and was happening. She bounced off of one problem and on to another, never taking the time to rationally think, she only reacted.
6. I had moments while reading this book where I wanted to shake Priscilla, other moments where I felt she needed a quiet embrace.
August 27, 2015
A great book I picked up on a whim. It’s a biography of the author’s aunt, his mother’s half-sister, who lived a somewhat redacted life before, during and after the Nazi Occupation of France. The nephew got a hold of a treasure trove of ephemera from his aunt’s life and wove a really captivating tale around it, most captivating because it was all so true.
Let it be known, that I’m a glutton for WWII stories. I’ll further confess that until relatively recently, there was a big France-shaped hole in my understanding of the intricacies of WWII. I only vaguely knew that Americans landed on beaches in France and helped liberate Europe from the Nazis. What I didn’t know then and didn’t learn fully until much later, not until I read Ian McEwan’s Dunkirk chapter in Atonement, is that France was occupied by the Germans for 5 years.
A sovereign European nation taken over by another sovereign European nation: All the implications of occupation, the resources of a nation stolen and used by an enemy state to feed its war machine, a city like Paris (Paris!) taken over by an enemy state who apparently (according to Priscilla’s story) used the city as its personal brothel, museums ransacked, invaluable works of art stolen, still not recovered even today. It was mind-blowing. Most mind-blowing was why did it take so long for me, a reasonably well-educated person, curious about the world, to learn about what happened in France during those five troubling years? Where were the films, books, first-hand accounts handed down from the Resistance? Where was the outrage from France in the post-war 20th century, the cries of “Never Forget! Never Again!”, the cries we hear so often now from places in the world which have been victims to similar injustices? In the current long-running trend of art to give voice to victims everywhere, to tell stories of the oppressed, where are the stories from France 1940-1944? The veil of shame around the event were (and are) as intriguing as hell. And the underlying current beneath it all that no one wants to talk about: the nebulous region between Resistance and Collaboration.
Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of his aunt Priscilla Mais bravely walks that nebulous region. Priscilla was the daughter of renowned BBC journalist SPB Mais and his estranged first wife in a time when divorce was not an option. Her story speaks of a broken girl from a broken home and what can happen when tragic under-parenting meets the extremes of survival in wartime.
Let it be known, that I’m a glutton for WWII stories. I’ll further confess that until relatively recently, there was a big France-shaped hole in my understanding of the intricacies of WWII. I only vaguely knew that Americans landed on beaches in France and helped liberate Europe from the Nazis. What I didn’t know then and didn’t learn fully until much later, not until I read Ian McEwan’s Dunkirk chapter in Atonement, is that France was occupied by the Germans for 5 years.
A sovereign European nation taken over by another sovereign European nation: All the implications of occupation, the resources of a nation stolen and used by an enemy state to feed its war machine, a city like Paris (Paris!) taken over by an enemy state who apparently (according to Priscilla’s story) used the city as its personal brothel, museums ransacked, invaluable works of art stolen, still not recovered even today. It was mind-blowing. Most mind-blowing was why did it take so long for me, a reasonably well-educated person, curious about the world, to learn about what happened in France during those five troubling years? Where were the films, books, first-hand accounts handed down from the Resistance? Where was the outrage from France in the post-war 20th century, the cries of “Never Forget! Never Again!”, the cries we hear so often now from places in the world which have been victims to similar injustices? In the current long-running trend of art to give voice to victims everywhere, to tell stories of the oppressed, where are the stories from France 1940-1944? The veil of shame around the event were (and are) as intriguing as hell. And the underlying current beneath it all that no one wants to talk about: the nebulous region between Resistance and Collaboration.
Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of his aunt Priscilla Mais bravely walks that nebulous region. Priscilla was the daughter of renowned BBC journalist SPB Mais and his estranged first wife in a time when divorce was not an option. Her story speaks of a broken girl from a broken home and what can happen when tragic under-parenting meets the extremes of survival in wartime.
December 25, 2013
Today’s Nonfiction post is on Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France by Nicholas Shakespeare. It is 448 pages long and it is published by HarperCollins. The cover is a picture of Priscilla during the time of the Nazi occupation of France. The story is told from some first person accounts like interviews and journal entries and sometimes from Shakespeare’s first person as he searches for information about his aunt. There is strong language, talk of sex and abortion, and violence; so adults only for the best. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
From the back of the book- When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunkful of his late aunt’s personal belongings, he was unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals, and photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy.
As a young boy, Shakespeare had always believed that his aunt was a member of the Resistance and had been tortured by the Germans. The truth turned out to be far more complicated.
Review- This is the first biography that I have read in about 20 years. I just do not really like them but I liked this book. It is very sad but Shakespeare loves his aunt. His compassion about her life, her dreams, and the things that she had to do in order to survive shines out. He lays out his aunt’s whole life from birth to her death of cancer. He interviews her friends that are still living, and if not he reads letters and personal journals about his aunt. This is a look at a woman who lived through a very dark time and parts of her never moved past it. Priscilla, like most people, was more than just one person. She was a daughter of failed parents, a sister unknown to most of her siblings, a wife to two husbands, and a survivor of one of the darkest times in modern history. This story is about more than just one woman. It is about all women who lived like her; on the edge of life and death. Priscilla is a call to give mercy to those who are just trying to survive in impossible times. I was very moved by this book.
I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I was given a copy of this book by HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review.
July 19, 2014
**Advanced Reading/Review copy provided by the author/publisher for an honest review**
I won this book through the Goodreads giveaways, and I was honestly intrigued by the whole concept. I've read many WWII books, from the perspective of the Jewish people who perished in Nazi concentration camps, and from historians who were doing research on the U.S. Soldiers and what they faced in the European and Pacific Theaters, but I'd never read one from the perspective of just a person who lived through it in Europe.
The story centers on the author's Aunt, Priscilla, who was the daughter of the at the time famous radio personality SPB Mais. Priscilla grew up in England, under her parents' unhappy marriage, until they finally split. She dealt with her mom's awful boyfriends and flings, and grew apart from her father. Her best friend Gillian is all that really helped her through most of her teen years.
Priscilla married a French noble very young, and soon found herself in a loveless marriage. During the occupation, Priscilla was with a lot of men, which helped her survive. She depended on German sympathizers for support and protection, and yes, she was in relationships with quite a few of them. They didn't all help her though, as she ended up finding herself in a Nazi internment camp for foreign women who happened to find themselves in France.
After the internment camp though, she was back with her various men. After the war, Priscilla suffered from PTSD, and did end up finding love with a man who ran a mushroom farm. She slipped into alcoholism as she suffered through her stress from the war, and eventually died of a brain tumor.
This book was a very interesting book, but not really what I thought it was going to be about. I expected to see a lot of day to day stuff, such as dealing with food shortages, and dealing with Nazi personnel, and while that was touched on, what this most focused on was how Priscilla chose men to help her survive. The author muses at one point about how to most people his aunt would be considered a loose woman, but that was what some women did to survive the occupation. We can't really judge them, since we weren't there.
I love biographies, and I love WWII, so, this book was right up my alley. As I said, it wasn't quite what I expected, but it was still an interesting and entertaining read, and I'm glad I picked it up.
I won this book through the Goodreads giveaways, and I was honestly intrigued by the whole concept. I've read many WWII books, from the perspective of the Jewish people who perished in Nazi concentration camps, and from historians who were doing research on the U.S. Soldiers and what they faced in the European and Pacific Theaters, but I'd never read one from the perspective of just a person who lived through it in Europe.
The story centers on the author's Aunt, Priscilla, who was the daughter of the at the time famous radio personality SPB Mais. Priscilla grew up in England, under her parents' unhappy marriage, until they finally split. She dealt with her mom's awful boyfriends and flings, and grew apart from her father. Her best friend Gillian is all that really helped her through most of her teen years.
Priscilla married a French noble very young, and soon found herself in a loveless marriage. During the occupation, Priscilla was with a lot of men, which helped her survive. She depended on German sympathizers for support and protection, and yes, she was in relationships with quite a few of them. They didn't all help her though, as she ended up finding herself in a Nazi internment camp for foreign women who happened to find themselves in France.
After the internment camp though, she was back with her various men. After the war, Priscilla suffered from PTSD, and did end up finding love with a man who ran a mushroom farm. She slipped into alcoholism as she suffered through her stress from the war, and eventually died of a brain tumor.
This book was a very interesting book, but not really what I thought it was going to be about. I expected to see a lot of day to day stuff, such as dealing with food shortages, and dealing with Nazi personnel, and while that was touched on, what this most focused on was how Priscilla chose men to help her survive. The author muses at one point about how to most people his aunt would be considered a loose woman, but that was what some women did to survive the occupation. We can't really judge them, since we weren't there.
I love biographies, and I love WWII, so, this book was right up my alley. As I said, it wasn't quite what I expected, but it was still an interesting and entertaining read, and I'm glad I picked it up.
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