Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

by Francine Prose

A richly imagined and stunningly inventive literary masterpiece of love, art, and betrayal, exploring the genesis of evil, the unforeseen consequences of love, and the ultimate unreliability of storytelling itself.

Paris in the 1920s shimmers with excitement, dissipation, and freedom. It is a place of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. It is at the Chameleon where the striking Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing lesbian, finds refuge among the club's loyal denizens, including the rising Hungarian photographer Gabor Tsenyi, the socialite and art patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol; and the caustic American writer Lionel Maine.

As the years pass, their fortunes - and the world itself - evolve. Lou falls desperately in love and finds success as a race car driver. Gabor builds his reputation with startlingly vivid and imaginative photographs, including a haunting portrait of Lou and her lover, which will resonate through all their lives. As the exuberant twenties give way to darker times, Lou experiences another metamorphosis - sparked by tumultuous events - that will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something far more.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, France, LGBT, Book Club, World War II

448 pages, Hardcover

First published April 22, 2014

About the author

Francine Prose is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent book is Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I recommend reading the author's Editorial Review, posted on the Amazon site, for some fascinating information -- Ripley's Believe It or Not fascinating. Francine Prose writes about an actual black and white photo she saw at an exhibition that served as the inspiration for this novel: "Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle, 1932", by famous Hungarian photographer Brassaï, taken at club Le Monocle in Montmartre, Paris. The provocative photo shows a pair of female lovers sharing a table, one dressed in a tuxedo. Captivated by the image (I imagine the pull those sea-green eyes of the National Geographic Afghan Girl had on me the first time I looked into them on the magazine cover), Prose began researching the photo, finding out about the subjects, the club Le Monocle, the patrons, the atmosphere of Paris during that brief period of frivolity that seemed to be driven to excesses by the darkening threat of WW II. The provenance of the photo alone is riveting, but for an author with a such creative mind, the eyes looking out from that B&W must have demanded more from her.

The cross-dresser in Brassaï's photo is the infamous Violette Morris; a French athlete that excelled in all athletic sports from boxing to track and field events. When she began competing in motorcycle and sports car races, she underwent a double mastectomy to make it easier for her to slide behind the steering wheel. (Looking at her psychological profile now, obviously there was more than just an extreme dedication to the sport that prompted her to take such a radical step.) Some of her records still stand and it's worth mentioning that they were earned competing against men as well as women, even in heavy-weight boxing. Violette was clearly a 5'5" and 150 lb. wolverine. She was the only female to ever make the all-male French National Water Polo Team. Eventually, Violette was banned from competing in any athletics because of her cross-dressing and lesbianism. This ban included the 1928 Olympics, which was a goal she had dreamed of and worked for. Reluctantly, she became a mechanic, until the war broke out. She turned her mad car skills into repairing, and driving ambulances on the front lines for her country. It was during this period when she was approached by a former racing colleague, an undercover Nazi spy. Violette was recruited, possibly lured in by a personal invitation from Hitler to participate in the 1936 Berlin Olympics (where she won 2 gold & 1 silver). In an act most likely of revenge, Violette quickly moved through the SS ranks to become one of Hitler's most notorious operatives, known as "The Hyena of the Gestapo" for her ability to sniff out and uncover those involved in the Resistance, and for her enthusiastic torture of her former countrymen. After terrorizing a country already living with the tension of constant suspicion, Violette was ambushed while on a drive in one of her sports cars. The car was unrecognizable, completely riddled with machine gun fire, the British and French Resistance the suspected executioners. Her body was never claimed by any of her former friends or lovers; she was buried in a common grave.

Prose has combined the intriguing history with an original concept, reconstructing it into a seductive fictional story written with force and beauty. Without compromising the integrity of facts or moralizing, she creates a mystery, that is just as much a parable, with profound moral questions never far from the surface. As a reader you feel transported to the exotic left bank of the Seine, and through the streets that Henry Miller once described as "capable of transforming the negativity of reality of life into the substantial and significant outlines of art," "surrounded by the men and women of Matisse." A secret password, 'Police! Open up!' throws open the doors to the fictional Chameleon Club and the patrons therein, seeking refuge from society's imposed gender barriers. Alive with flamboyant color, the club is a decadent haven for *glorious peacocks,* women dressed like men, "bankers and diplomats whose wives might not know they like to go out and dance in heels." Where, perhaps, Josephine Baker's infamous diamond-collared cheetah may have terrorized the orchestra. Ensconced into a leather booth, tucked against a 'sleek modern beauty,' sits the tuxedo-clad Louisianne *Lou* Villars (Violette Morris).

Prose's characters are alive and vibrant, which they actual were in their historical incarnation, and as a skilled author, she inhabits them completely without overlapping any personal nuances. Her jumps from one character to the next are crisp and definitive. The owner of the Chameleon Club is an Hungarian blonde beauty, always dressed in red, known as Yvonne. A throaty voiced chanteuse with a penchant for sailors, and a large pet chameleon named Louis, that lives in a terrarium in her room -- she is the master of ceremonies to the menagerie of colorful characters that gather at her club and lend their voices to the alternating narratives: the Hungarian photographer, Gabor Tsenyl (Brassaï); his American friend/writer/womanizer Lionel Maine (Henry Miller); Suzanne Dunois, Gabor's wife; the wealthy patron of the artists, a French Baroness by-way-of-Hollywood, Baroness Lily de Rossignol; her husband Baron Rossignol, owner of the Rossignol automobile dynasty, a gay man that prefers Swedish boys to his lovely wife; and an assorted artistically advantaged ensemble not seen since Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. Looking back at the events from current time, and writing the biography of Lou Villars, is Nathalie Dunois, a neurotic, whiny, distant relative of photograper Gabor's wife. From their letters and narratives the reader must solve the mystery of Lou's evolution. Each has their own experience of Lou, their own perspective. With differing versions, the reader is faced with deciding whether any of these inherently limited truths account for a totality of truth about Lou and her transformation from Catholic schoolgirl to Hitler's favorite Gestapo operative.

I was conflicted about a rating. Prose is definitely one of the finest contemporary writers I've read, but the introduction of these characters is detailed, a long demanding portion of the book(almost half). The intoxication of 30's Paris, the pandemonium in the club, the luminous characters and their complex stories, all make for some tricky footwork just to keep pace. This is not text you just ingest -- you have to chew on it, digest it. You don't just easily slide in and ride along; it is somewhat of an endurance sport in the beginning (but a lovely one). So, I battled with that 5* rating...then looked back at the Nabokov quote the author uses as her lead-in to this novel...

❝Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between.❞ ["That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature." from Nabokov's Lectures on Literature.] He continues ..."a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle."

You could say that 5th star was a victim of the telltale tingle. Lover's at the Chameleon Club is a book of tingly genius; just imagining Montparnasse during the early twentieth century -- this crossroads of artistic revolution, with Stravinsky, Copland, Picasso, Duchamp, Chagall, Matisse, Diaghilev, Hemingway -- French intellectuals Proust, Sartre...I was already primed with a tingle. Absolutely, Prose created a prismatic and hypnotic novel, but a grand portion of that colorful magic was provided by history, and a black and white photo...and that is where I place my fifth star. Beyond the story, or within the story, I felt Prose incorporated a resonating parable that provides some wisdom for the ages: the parable implies that even though one's subjective experiences can be true, theirs doesn't account for other truths, or the totality of truth. There is some relativism to truths, or 'an inexpressible nature of truth,' a deficit that requires communicate and respect for different perspectives. History, and often fiction, is a great teacher; Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932: A Novel is an intriguing read.

*Highly recommend with the suggestions to persevere, and to look up Violette Morris. She is an enigma.

[Ruthie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book, I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn't work for me. Too many narrators (reliable or not), too long, too repetitive, and often too boring. I was distracted by the "based on real people but not really" issue. Without a a Forward or an Afterward I found myself spending frustrating amounts of time trying to ascertain what was true, almost true and what was pure fiction. For some it may not matter, for me, when the subject matter is the Holocaust, the Resistance, a well known work of art, etc, it matters.

On a different level the relationships between the characters didn't ring true. I never felt the attractions/connections between any of the couples, be they be lovers or friends. I didn't like any of the characters, but that is not necessary for me to like a novel, I just found it odd that I found none of the characters especially sympathetic. At times it felt like the author was just throwing as many "names" at the reader as she could, perhaps to add authenticity to the story...

I did like the descriptions of the Chameleon Club and Paris at night, as well as Hitler's Berlin. Looking at Brassai's (on whom, I assume, Gabor is based) photography you can see the genius he had capturing/recreating the grit and beauty of night time/underground Paris. The author did a good job making me see how a photographer may have found his niche and survived financially and creatively. That's about all that I enjoyed about the novel.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early on in Francine Prose’s richly imagined and intricately constructed tour de force, Yvonne – the proprietress of the Parisian Chameleon Club –tells a story about her pet lizard, Darius. “One night I was working out front. My friend, a German admiral whose name you would know, let himself into my office and put my darling Darius on my paisley shawl. He died, exhausted by the strain of turning all those colors.”

History – and the people who compose it – is itself a chameleon, subject to multiple interpretations. Ms. Prose seems less interested in exploring “what is the truth” and more intrigued with the question, “Is there truth?”

The title derives from a photograph that defined the career of the fictional photographer, Gabor Tsenyl: two female lovers lean towards each other at the Chameleon Club table. His is one of five narratives that punctuate the novel. The showcase narrative – written as a biography by the grand-niece of one of the participants – focuses on Lou Villars, a one-time Olympic hopeful and scandalous cross-dresser who crosses over to the dark side and becomes a Nazi collaborator. The other four narratives are composed of devoted letters from Gabor to his parents; the unpublished memoirs of Suzanne, his wife; excerpts from a book by the libertine expatriate writer Lionel Maine; and finally, the memoirs of a benefactor of the arts, Baroness Lily de Rossignol. Each narrative plays off the others and provides subtle suggestions that the other narratives may not be entirely accurate.

What is the truth of this intoxicating time, when artists of all kinds gravitated to the Paris scene and when war with Germany was an increasingly sober possibility? Francine Prose suggests that the truth is fluid. Reportedly, Lou Villars was inspired by a real person named Violette Morris. There are more than a few hints of Peggy Guggenheim in Lily de Rossignol and Lionel Maine bears a resemblance to Henry Miller. How much is fact and how much is fiction?

And once the reader gets over that hurdle, how much of what is revealed by the fictional characters is distorted through their own lens? How much of that is truth and how much is perception? Can we ever know the real person who lurks behind the mask? As Francine Prose writes, “The self who touches and is touched in the dark ,between the sheets, is not the same self who gets up in the morning and goes out to buy coffee and croissants.

I’ve said little about plot and that’s deliberate: the unfolding of the plot is for each reader to discover himself or herself. I will say this: the writing is exquisite and in my opinion, elevates an already talented contemporary writer to entirely new levels. The ending is breathtaking in its audacity. The setting – Paris in the late 1920s – is mesmerizing. The themes touch on universal matters: getting in touch with our authentic selves, crossing society-imposed gender barriers, understanding the fluidness of morality, searching for love and approval in dangerous places, making sacrifices for art, and discovering that history is not immutable, but changes depending on who tells it.

I read Lovers in the Chameleon Club directly after another very disparate book: Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy Snow Bird. Interestingly, both tackle the meaning of truth from very different yet unique angles. This is a stunning book and I enthusiastically recommend it.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspired by the portrait “Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle, 1931” taken by Hungarian photographer Brassai, Francine Prose takes poetic license to write this historical fiction novel. Prose uses real people to create her characters. In the novel, Gabor Tsenyi is based on Brassai’s life in Paris. Brassi did take portraits of the seedier side of nighttime Paris in addition to the High Society of Paris. Brassi became friends with American author Henry Miller who is loosely portrayed by the character Lionel Maine. In the portrait “Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle, 1931” Violette Morris is the male-looking woman of the lesbian couple in the Brassai portrait.

Violette Morris was a highly decorated French athlete whose pinnacle achievements were between the years 1921-1924. The French Women’s Athletic Federation banned Violette from competing in 1928 summer Olympics because of Violette’s lesbian lifestyle. Violette did work for the SS of Nazi Germany. In the novel, Lou Villars character follows, somewhat, Violette’s life.

In Prose novel, Lou Villars evolves through the transition of the times of 1920 through 1930’s Paris. In the ‘20’s it’s fun and glamour. In the ‘30’s both Lou and Paris become dark and dangerous. Prose tells her story through five characters’ prospective, giving slants to events and providing differing accounts of events in history. The main character is Lou Villars, and depending upon who you believe, she was a true evil opportunist, or a sad and lonely girl looking for love in all the wrong places, swept up in evil though events beyond her control.

I like historical fiction novels that inspire me to research characters and time periods. This book did that. Plus, it’s a highly entertaining tale.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pssst. Looking for a good read? Check out the Chameleon Club in Montparnasse. Go alone — or with someone you trust. Step down a few stairs, knock on the door and whisper the password: “Police! Open up!”

Welcome to “Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932.” Inside these smoky pages you’ll find an oasis of ribald humor, sexual transgression and military intrigue. Our host, Yvonne, is a Hungarian singer with a pet lizard and a weakness for sailors. Play nice and she’ll let you mingle with one of Europe’s most famous photographers or a cross-dressing Nazi collaborator or the wife (ha!) of a luxury automaker. And look — sitting behind those naked men painted silver, isn’t that some scandalous American writer talking to a dancing girl with suspiciously broad shoulders? (Don’t ask, don’t tell.)

So dazzlingly does Francine Prose re-create this seamy chapter of mid-century Paris that it’s tempting to think of her as not a novelist but an editor who corralled all these people into a raucous work of history. But for all Prose’s dark magic, blades of fact slice through this novel, too. Her inspiration came from a black-and-white photograph she saw in Washington at the National Gallery almost 15 years ago. Taken in 1932 by the young Hungarian now known to the world as Brassaï, the picture shows two women: one in a party dress, the other in a man’s suit. Curious about the cross-dresser, Prose discovered that she was Violette Morris, a celebrated French athlete who later betrayed her country to Hitler and tortured Resistance members for the Gestapo. “It was such an amazing story that I considered writing it as nonfiction,” she says, “but I soon decided that I would have more liberty, and that I and my readers would have a lot more fun, if I wrote it as a novel.”

Vive la liberté!

Sexual roles aren’t the only things crossed in this spectacular saga of Paris at war. Deadly serious and hilariously gossipy, “Lovers at the Chameleon Club” comes to us as a collection of documents written by people with wildly different perspectives and motives. Even as these characters retain their own personalities in this noisy conversation, Prose fits shards of history together to form a mosaic that only we can see. The interlocking voices — all seductive and unreliable in their own ways — show Paris as it devolves from the decadence and gallows humor of the 1930s to the terror and bravery of the Occupation.

In this alchemy of patriotism, xenophobia, sexual frustration and anti-Semitism, Prose raises up underground heroes and cosmic villains. We hear first off from Brassaï — renamed Gabor — in his affectionate letters to his parents in Hungary. Full of gratitude for their financial support, he describes the bizarre sights of the city even while begging them not to worry. “I know your blood must run cold,” he says, “at the thought of supporting a son whose ambition is to photograph transvestites.” But his ambition rises far higher than that, and his profession gives the novel a gorgeous lens through which to record Paris — “an insomniac’s heaven” — in those anxious years before the tanks roll in. “Is it my fault,” he asks, “that desperation looks so stunning through the camera lens?”

His radical techniques — from surreptitious candids to restaged street scenes and shadowy night shots — reflect Prose’s own approach as a literary artist. She, too, mixes historical tableaux with carefully re-imagined moments and alluringly distorted visions. Among the many unforgettable scenes in these pages is a lavish dinner party during the Olympics hosted by Adolf Hitler, whose queenly graciousness renders the event equally comic and grotesque. But usually Prose works off in the wings of history, changing the names of almost-forgotten figures and blending their stranger-than-fiction lives into a cabaret act of horror and heroism.

From the ranks of Brassaï’s friends and lovers, she lifts Henry Miller and refashions him as archly cynical Lionel Maine, a writer constantly on the prowl for women and someone to buy him a drink. We read his embellished news items for gullible Americans and snatches of his (banned) chatty memoir, “Make Yourself New.” “So what if I’m a useless middle-aged bum? A phony and a poseur. Who cares if no one reads my work?” he writes in a moment of exasperated bravado. “I can write what I want and rip the ghastly wig off the beautiful bald head of truth!”

Among the other characters who speak up in these chapters are Gabor’s future wife and a gorgeous baroness — a “streamlined radiant sunbeam of sleek modern beauty” — who funds Gabor’s photography career with money from her gay husband’s sports-car business. But none of these narrators is more fascinating and troubling than Nathalie Dunois, a frustrated high school teacher who has self-published a biography of Lou Villars, a.k.a. Violette Morris, the cross-dressing traitor. In the interspersed chapters of this alarmingly subjective work of scholarship, we race along with Lou’s life as she morphs from Catholic schoolgirl to cabaret dancer to Nazi collaborator.

Who could make this stuff up? And yet Prose has created a particularly promiscuous biographer, who eventually becomes part of the swirling mystery of the novel. Not only does Dunois drift off into chatty complaints about her own life, but she constantly suggests the root causes of Lou’s treachery, her “elastic adaptability,” even while warning us not to draw facile psychological connections between the struggles of her youth and the history-changing crimes of her adult life: “Not every spurned lover punishes the world by telling the Germans where the Maginot Line ended.” True, but as we “wade deeper into the swamp of Lou’s psyche,” her Joan of Arc complex grows increasingly mesmerizing. What’s the source of her sexual frustration (she elects to have her breasts removed), her patient cruelty (she politely burns her country­men with a cigarette lighter) or her attraction to race-car driving (she moves like “a lunatic on Nazi speed”)?

Surely, truth is here, somewhere, scurrying through this thicket of thrilling, wrenching, self-serving testimonies. But Prose eventually deconstructs any claims to documentary evidence, forcing us to admit that historical fact may remain as elusive as the participants’ motives. Nevertheless, we crave a unified theory: Was Lou clinically depressed? Are we seeing “the power of resentment, the corrosive acid produced by the conviction that a person has been overlooked, cheated, or betrayed”? What if some nice young lesbian had really loved Lou? What if Hitler’s art teacher had been more encouraging? Such speculations are futile but irresistible.

So don’t be nervous. Walk through the door of “The Chameleon Club” and you’ll be entranced by the way Prose plumbs the enigma of evil, the puzzle of history and the mystery of valor. C’est magnifique!

From The Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Francine Prose's popular book about reading and writing, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, she advocates “close reading.” Only by slowing down and carefully reading every word can we understand what is said and what is not said – the nuances of meaning that the writer has worked so hard to put into every word and into the spaces between the words. That's good advice when reading any serious writer and of course when reading Prose. (Is there a writer with a better name?)

“Even as Lou's downward slide was gathering momentum, she prided herself on maintaining certain standards and not losing touch, as many of her neighbors were, with basic human decency and compassion. She was slow to come on board with the measures against the Jews, however much she personally disliked them. She knew that harsh tactics were sometimes required. She'd waited on line at the Palais Berlitz to see an informative exhibition entitled “The Jew and France,” where a display confirmed what she'd long suspected: behind every scandal lurked a Jew. Still, she didn't enjoy seeing children herded through the streets at gunpoint. Once she was almost hurt by some idiot cops hurling crockery down from an apartment at a terrified Jewish family being loaded into a van.”

“Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932” is the title of the emblematic photograph that launches Gabor Tsenyi's career. It is a picture of two women, a cross-dressing athlete named Lou Villars, who will become France's first female race car driver and then an infamous Nazi collaborator, and Arlette, her lover, who will leave Lou for a powerful cop/gangster. This assured, atmospheric novel covers a lot of ground – love and betrayal, good and evil, war and its aftermath, the mutability of truth – and ultimately packs a powerful punch. It opens in 1928 and tracks the transformation of Lou Villars from unhappy child to disappointed lover to monster, a life based on a real woman named Violette Morris. It is to Prose's credit that we sympathize with Lou even as she betrays the country she professes to love. Other characters are also inspired by real-life figures, including the Hungarian photographer Brassai and there's a dissolute American writer who resembles Henry Miller.

Prose makes the Chameleon Club the locus of the decadence and desperate good times of Paris in the jazz age and she circles back to it through occupation and war. The story is told and retold in alternating chapters by different narrators through excerpts from a biography of Lou Villars, letters, journals and a memoir, each presumed to be self-serving and unreliable. Taken together they paint a picture that captures the conflicted loyalties of a giddy and terrible time, a picture that surely contains the truth but in whose version? History is as changeable as gender roles at the Chameleon Club and this captivating novel is stunning in its contemplation of its meaning.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The locus of Francine Prose’s sterling new book is the fictional Chameleon Club in Paris (Montparnasse), and even more specifically, a picture of two female lovers at the club taken in 1932 (the eponymous “Lovers at the Chameleon Club”) by Hungarian photographer Gabor Tsenyi, who resides in Paris. The story takes place primarily in the years leading up to and including WW II, although the shifting narrative perspectives also encompass contemporary time reflecting back to that period. Paris comes across as more than a setting--its atmospheric presence comes alive, as if it, too, were a character in this luminous tale.

Through Prose’s glowing lens and Rashomon effect, we see the darkness of the soul, the murkiness of memory, and the shadows of human existence. The central character of the novel is Lou Villars, a French lesbian, cross-dressing athlete and racecar driver, based loosely on the life of Violette Morris, who spied on France for the Nazis. She was one of the lovers in the photo, taken when she worked at the Chameleon Club. How did this poor French orphan, in love with France, come to spy on her country?

The biographer in this novel is Nathalie Dunois, who she tells us is the great-niece of Suzanne Dunois, Gabor’s wife. Nathalie tells the story (in alternating chapters with other characters) about what happened during this period. In addition, she describes the psychological/philosophical experience of being a biographer--of not just Lou Villar, but of the mystery of evil.

“…having encountered, time and again, the concerted efforts to remove Lou Villars from history…, I have had to embroider a bit, fill in gaps, invent dialogue, make an occasional imaginative leap or informed guess about what my subject would have thought and felt.”

Besides Nathalie, Suzanne Dunois is writing her memoir (to be destroyed on her death), chronicling back to her salad days with Gabor, including memories of when Lou worked for the Chameleon Club. Other main players are American writer Lionel Maine, Gabor’s best friend, and the Baroness Lily De Rossignol, married to a wealthy industrialist/manufacturer of elite automobiles. The baroness was the main patron of Gabor, backing him financially in his photography business. Gabor’s letters home to his parents in Hungary are braided within the narratives. The chapters on Yvonne, the Hungarian who owned the Chameleon Club, are written in third person.

What unfolds is an inventive story about love, betrayal, secrets, lies, identity, vice, moral truth, historical verity, the mystery of evil--and the slaying of tin gods by an author who does it with panache, and sympathy for her characters. Each person in the novel searches for sanctuary of some kind, whether concrete or ideal. The reader picks up subtle hints of contradiction between narrators, or maybe just a parallax view.

Gabor’s transcendent use of his camera captures the streets and places in Paris, from lowly squalor to high society, preserving memory or manipulating it; revealing or concealing; promoting or poisoning; metaphorically reflecting or refracting a moment in time for future pondering and present unease. Gabor can capitalize on wartime tragedy:

“I am thinking, It’s fabulous for my art. Is it my fault that desperation looks so stunning through the camera lens?”

The truth is full of shadows and dreams, and the story questions the tilt of history’s moral compass; by the end, it seemed more like a prism.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entirely Coincidental?

This thoroughly entertaining novel carries the usual disclaimer: "Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental." A disingenuous disclaimer in this case, since the author admits that her source is a famous photograph, "Couple at the Monocle, Paris, 1932." Unfortunately, no doubt for copyright reasons, this is not reproduced in Prose's book, which instead has a garish cover that does the text no justice; this book is not neon but noir. This being Goodreads, I can include the picture below: two figures sitting side by side at a disheveled cafe table; one is a birdlike woman, the other a slightly pudgy man. Both are staring into private spaces of their own; the male figure seems distracted, a little sad, even tormented; what is going on in his mind? Francine Prose asked herself the same question, and the result is this novel, a stirring and at times even moving blend of imagination and fact.



As the full title of the photograph would reveal, the "man" is in fact a woman in male clothes. The stylishness of her suit, tie, and silk handkerchief contrasts with the rumpled collar and her slightly lost air; this is a woman who is comfortable nowhere, certainly not in conventional female roles, but not entirely in male ones either. Prose discovered that the original was a Frenchwoman named Violette Morris, trained to phenomenal strength as an athlete in many sports, including discus, soccer, and water polo, and later achieving fame as a race-car driver. But as a national role-model, her unacceptable bisexual lifestyle got her banned from participation in the 1928 Olympics, causing her to withdraw from sport. Later still, she was recruited as a spy for the Germans and ultimately worked for the Gestapo as an interrogator.

Francine Prose says she considered writing her story as non-fiction, but eventually decided on a novel. So Violette becomes Lou Villars, whose life story follows the original pretty closely. But the facts are not the point: in the first few pages, we are told the equivalent to virtually everything I have said about Violette Morris above. Prose's purpose is to ask the searching questions: how could a national heroine turn into torturer and traitor, and what did it feel like to live inside the hyperdeveloped body and tormented mind of Violette/Lou? To do this, she interweaves many voices: drafts of a biography written sixty years later, the autobiography of a French Baroness who was for a while Lou's patron, excerpts from the writings of an expatriate American writer, the letters of the Hungarian photographer who took the photo, and the memoirs of his wife, whose path crossed Lou's on several memorable occasions. Not all the voices are equally successful; the American writer seems almost peripheral to the plot and his writing has nothing of the spice of Henry Miller, his presumed model. But together they make a finely nuanced portrait not only of the major characters involved, but also of the decadent period between the wars that nursed the ensuing tragedy.

[Ignore, incidentally, the references to Rashomon you will see on the book cover. Although these various accounts differ in perspective and minor detail, this only gives greater depth to the whole, and a softer-edged sympathy. There is none of the outright contradiction you get in the Kurosawa film masterpiece, although a chapter near the very end of the book will introduce a surprising new twist.]

But Lou Villars, while interesting, was not the main attraction of the book for me. No, it was the artist behind the camera of the original photograph, the great Romanian photographer Brassaï. Apart from changing his name to Gabor Tsenyi and his nationality to Hungarian, Prose adheres much more closely to his real biography than she does with any of her other characters, including his fondness for photographing the Paris of the shadows and his later friendship with Picasso. His was the viewpoint that I trusted most, because in essence it still exists. Rely on the author's prose to provide insight into the torments simmering behind the man-woman in the famous photo, but keep a gallery of the real Brassaï photographs open as you read, as the perfect visual background to this intriguing novel. Here is a thumbnail sample: two more photos of lovers; a sad grotesque; and two of his Paris nocturnes, studies in loneliness.

[Ayelet Waldman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I swear I'm not being arrogant (I'm far too full of self-loathing for that) when I say that my World War 2 related book is simply better than this one.

[Suanne Laqueur · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Each person has his or her version of the truth about the bright and glorious days of Paris in the 1920s, the theatrical spectacle and intrigue of Berlin in the 1930s, and the darker era that began when those two worlds came together. As always, the novel ended in a very different place from that in which it began. I started off writing about a woman in a tuxedo and wound up writing about art, love, evil, money, auto racing, espionage, insomnia, seduction, and betrayal—and the way that history changes, depending on who tells it."

[Chaitra · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a godawful number of days to finish this book, so I think it's safe to say The Lovers didn't exactly hook me. I don't think the book ever made up its mind what it was about - the degeneracy (or something) of pre-World War II Paris or about a resentful, unloved woman who wanted nothing more than to be (like) a man, or about the awesome French Resistance during WWII generally kicking Nazi and collaborators' asses. It's got some of everything, and nothing stands out.

I would have given it points for the structure - a number of narrators, a number of forms - had it not been done in a much better fashion this very year by Siri Hustvedt in The Blazing World. There the content in whatever form served to increase our understanding of the (also flawed) main character. Here it's too disparate, and Lou, who may have been our main concern, is mostly reduced to an afterthought. Too many threads, none of them are advanced in any coherent fashion.

Add to that, a decidedly odd addendum at the end that whatever we read about Lou might not actually have been true, even beyond the constant disclaimers and imaginations of the author of Lou's biography herself - I was left thinking if there was a motive beyond repurposing whatever material Prose had gathered about Brassaï for his biography. I must have missed something, because I found this book underwhelming. 2 stars.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose is an extremely well-crafted book, ostensibly about a cross-dressing, gender fluid club in, you guessed it, Paris, 1932. The title comes from a photograph taken by one of the book's protagonist, Gabor. The story is only partially about gender issues in a time not very understanding but also about Hitler, the drive for submission, courage, art, and love in many different forms.

I admired the book but didn't quite like it. I find Prose's tone generally cold in all her works and this was no exception. Even the most "likable" characters were not, for me, very likable.

That notwithstanding, their lives were fascinating and the story, also about the lure, for some, of evil, was fascinating.

Perhaps the tremendous hype around this book was a factor in my less enthusiastic response. I certainly recommend the book as a work of literature and a terrific historical portrait of a significant time and place and of the role of art, wealth, and entertainment.

[Steven Godin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really had high hopes for this as it's a period of Parisian history that I'm really interested in.

Great title and a great cover, but the novel itself felt very flat to me, with wooden characters and a quite boring story. Just couldn't get into it, and at about the halfway point I went into skimming mode. Richly imagined yes, and I don't mind a novel going with different narrators, but I wasn't convinced by a lot of it.

There is a line in the novel early on that says Paris is an insomniac's heaven. (Very true, having lived there). But all Paris did here in these pages was leave me battling to stay awake.
I'd have been better off reading a non-fiction book of this time instead. Or, at least an older novel by a writer who was actually there.

Those who have never been to Paris, and love the escapism of historical fiction by modern writers, then it might be more engaging. Unfortunately for me though, Paris had never felt so dull.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a comfortable novel to read at the present time. Despite the cover and title, it isn’t a romance at all. It is, in fact, a depiction of the creeping menace of fascism and how it encroaches on people’s lives. The structure of the narrative is interesting, as it consists of various documents in which each writer tells their own version of a single story. This story centres on Lou Villars, who is not given her own voice in the narrative. As the author’s afterword states, she is based quite closely on a real person who had the same extraordinary life experiences that are recounted here. Lou is an athlete as a teenager, then becomes a cross-dressing nightclub dancer, then a racing driver, then a mechanic, then an informant, then a gestapo torturer. Also she's a lesbian. Although most of the book’s narrators speculate about her motives, the absence of her point of view really emphasises the difficulties of historical interpretation. Somewhat surprisingly, though, I did not find Lou the most interesting part of the book. Perhaps because everything she did was so heavily foreshadowed and warned about. The real strength of the novel, I thought, was the reactions of the Parisian narrators to the instability of France and looming threat of Hitler in the 1930s. There were some chilling passages, for example:

That was how we heard what was happening to the French Jews. In the middle of nowhere, we heard what was going on, so those who say they didn’t know must have never gone outside or had one conversation with another person. I know this is not a popular view. No French citizen wants to hear it. It is one of the reasons I have repeatedly changed my mind about whether I want my memoirs destroyed after I am dead.
[...]
Our problems seemed trivial compared to those of the Jews. No matter how our hearts ached for them, we were relieved when they left, not only because we hoped they would be safe but because of our guilt. Being unable to help them increased the strain on our nerves.

The current rise of neo-nazi rhetoric in the political mainstream makes this kind of novel seem very relevant. ‘Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932’ offers no easy answers, but there are some moments of beauty as well as dread and horror. This is a novel about judging your own and others' actions in retrospect, reflecting on behaviour during a time of extremity. It’s not the easiest book to get into, but is thoughtfully and elegantly written so repays persistence.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A review on goodreads advised not to skip the preface in the book. There is no preface in this book and I searched the web for what that bit might have contained. Perhaps the preface was an essay on the Mystery of Evil, perhaps it shared the true story of a woman formed, then forged by time and events. The mention of a missing preface about Evil set the stage in time for this book. 1934 in Paris, the American writer Lionel Maine describes the scene. "Unemployment, inflation, mass bankruptcy, immigration, a crushing national debt, an increasing tax roll and a diminishing tax base, political scandal, poverty, a shrinking middle class–" Sound familiar? Add a twitchy failed painter, psychotic visionary rising to power in the country next door. The characters who live, love and fear in Paris as its lights fade are brilliantly wrought. Yvonne, owner of The Chameleon Club, who keeps a lizard in a terrarium she decorates for color changes. Baroness de Rossignol, empress of style and keeper of secrets. Gabor and Lionel, fame-hungry expats who have left behind more than just family. Lou Villars, who knocks on the door of the Chameleon Club one night in bloodied white trousers. There are multiple unreliable narrators, each placed firmly in the storyline: Lionel is writing a book mostly about being a writer. Gabor writes his parents in Hungary, Susanne's niece is writing a biography of Villars; de Rossignol, a memoir. The voices are corroborated or accused by each other's writing. Motivation, ambition, circumstances work together as melodically as the band at the Club. Prose pins everyone, and then shuffles the results. Find the villain. Find the hero. Use the password "Police, open up!" and Fat Bernard will escort you to your table.

[Offbalance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's the thing - at the halfway mark, this book was going to get a five-star review. I loved the multiple-perspective storytelling. I loved the epistolary structure. And mostly, I loved the build-up to the promised struggles and horrors to come after the sparkling days of pre-WWII Paris. But then, I kept reading, and instead of a climax, I got an anti-climax instead.

I don't know if Prose came up against a deadline or wrote herself into a corner, but what she was building up to just didn't deliver. And the actual ending that she chose? I was kind of baffled. I guess I could see the wisdom of what and how she ended it on, but it left me cold. I can understand that the characters who endured these tragedies may not want to go into detail while looking back on them, but at the same time, why have them build up to it in such great detail, and promise such exciting rewards and not deliver?

I definitely think this book is worth a read, but the ending was a let down. The war and resolution should not have felt like an after-thought.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This complex litany of voices rewards the attentive reader with a multitude of perspectives on events that unfolded into the Occupation of Paris in WWII. By giving each of her selected main characters a voice in the first person, FP allows us to witness the moral trajectory of those under the particular pressure of the times, and the evolution, and the impact, of their choices.

This is a difficult feat for a writer to pull off, the authorial voice often drowning out the various voices that would distinguish themselves.FP does pretty well, especially as the action moves forward and a certain familiarity has been established with all the characters, whether we are sympathetic with them or not.

Ultimately, as character driven as the novel is, it is the ideas it tackles that make the book so outstanding. The genesis of evil and its authority is repeatedly pondered, and questions of gender and power intelligently explored.

[Joe M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for this era and setting, so thanks HarperCollins and Goodreads for the review copy!

(3.5 but I'm rounding up to 4) Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 is a bright and raucous novel, cleverly unveiled through a variety of voices, sources, and questionably reliable perspectives. There are letters home from the struggling photographer Gabor, the brooding dispatches of Lionel Maine, a bitter yet hilarious ex-pat, and the narratives of the rich and dazzling Baroness, matriarch of the Rossignol auto manufacturer. Prose weaves their stories together through alternating narratives as we mingle with them among various social circles of pre-war Paris.

Most enjoyable of Chameleon's cast is Lou, a cross-dressing entertainer turned race-car driver, whose story is relayed by biographer, and romantically-challenged high school teacher, Nathalie Dunois. Lou's story is a fascinating and unconventional rise to fame, detailing her early life as an Olympic athlete, through her musical underground nightlife at the Chameleon Club, and taking a darker turn as the story's villain, a cruel and calculating Nazi interrogator. The opening quote by Nabokov is an early warning of the unreliable narrator, and Lou's story, with Dunois at the helm, definitely evoked for me some of the joys of reading "Pale Fire," trying to decipher the line between fiction and reality once the storyteller's personal issues begin to creep in.

While the characters are engrossing, Paris of the 20's and 30's is the true star of this show, and Prose has done a beautiful job bringing the city to life, ushering readers into seedy nightclubs with secret passwords, hobnobbing with the rich and powerful at dinner parties and on the sidelines of the racetrack--even a pop by what I assume is the Hôtel de Savoie for a quick tour of Picasso's studio. As the story ultimately shifts from the high-life of pre-war Paris, to the German occupation during WWII, some of the plot did lose some steam, and you can't fault Prose that the Nazis marching down the Champs-Élysées halts the fun like a glass of flat champagne. Some characters (Suzanne and Francine come to mind) never really met their full potential, and I would have loved some further development. Lou as well is a fascinating and complex character, but I felt I would have enjoyed her story more without seeing it through the lens of her chatty biographer. Such was Prose's intention that the reader is left with an incomplete picture of the true events. All in all, it's a small complaint as I was swept away with this novel. The lights, spectacle, and the roisterous high-life of 1930's-era Paris make for fantastic escapism.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wonder if even a master novelist like Prose can get tripped up when writing about a different time, especially one that many of us have fully imagined in our heads. The characters she creates are probably close enough to how these various types of people actually were, so I have no problem with her creating fake people to stand in for real ones -- and interact with real people of the time.

I am actually disappointed most when her characters talk. It's as if Prose, not knowing how these various vagabond-types would have spoken, merely reduces everyone to an eighth-grade speaking level. So no one has a compelling or memorable voice. And by the end I was so tired of hearing the psychological reasons for one character's emergence as a Nazi torturer that I couldn't work up any feeling about her death.

[Suzanne Stroh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like a few other reviewers, I wanted very much to like this epistolary novel set in Nazi occupied Paris.

Steeped in the art history, gay subculture and belles lettres of an era where all those things coexisted in the world capitol plunging into war and moral darkness, I hoped the book would build as powerfully as, say, Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons or even Possession by Byatt. But Chameleon Club falls far short of its own aims.

In the late 1930s with World War II approaching, the novel follows group of friends and lovers from a variety of social backgrounds whose paths all cross at the same nightclub in Paris. Some become Nazi collaborators. Others, Resistants. Some flee the country.

This is a book designed to explore good and evil through multiple lenses on the same events. If this novel had worked as planned, readers would get unforgettable insights into how and why friends end up making starkly different moral choices and end up going down different life paths. But we end up with refractions instead of clarity. And as far as all the fawning reviews go, citing this book's "dazzling" and "inventive" literary qualities, the dazzle isn't all it appears to be. And the clever inventions serve no real purpose.

So what happened? One reviewer comments that none of the characters rings true, and I agree. Comparing this novel with the fiction, biography, belles lettres and memoirs from the period, I find that the source material is so much richer than the novel Francine Prose has constructed from it.

The Henry Miller character, for instance, writes his memoir with one tenth the authenticity and passion of Miller himself, whose prose is quite easy to mimic. In the voice of Prose's "Henry Miller," the rhythm is all off. The language choices often seem odd. It was a major disappointment to read those sections.

Intercut with this and other memoirs is the document that forms the spine of the book: The biography of French racing driver-turned-collaborator Lou Villars, modeled on the lesbian cross dressing Violette Morris. Villars' biographer Nathalie Dunois, constantly commenting on her own process of writing her book, keeps telling us how mentally unstable she is is, which is never a great way of presenting a mentally unstable character. (Dunois cannot find a publisher for a book about a lesbian athlete-turned-sociopath. This present-day reality turns out to be one of the more interesting aspects of this novel, and yet the subject is ill served by making Dunois, the biographer, delusional. It's one more bad choice by the novelist that wrecks what she set out to do, and could well have done, with this material.)

In any case, Lou Villars' biographer is presented as an unreliable narrator--and lest we ever forget this, there is a pointless coda (in the form of a letter to an editor objecting to a book review of Dunois' self-published biography) that flogs that dead horse. The information revealed in the coda adds nothing to the book. By then, I had ceased to care what the "facts" were. Why bother to write the narrative of an unreliable biographer unless there is some kind of twist or revelation at the end that grips us, forcing us to change our minds about something, shedding new light on the very nature of biography itself, along with truth telling and the publishing world today? The unreliable narrator, as a literary device, sheds no light whatever on the core Villars story, let alone on the broader themes of the novel.

Different problems exist with the other memoirists, both female French Resistants. One is a frigid baroness by marriage to a gay man from an Old France family. Lily de Rossignol--what an unlikely and cringeworthy surname for this family!--leads one of the more interesting lives of all the characters'. The other Resistance heroine writing her memoir (why is it, inexplicably, to be destroyed on her death????) is an impoverished French sexpot eking out a living as a language tutor and still living with her mother. Her "small" life and narrow interests are considerably broadened by the war.

The memoir-writing baroness's depiction of the Rossignol family auto business, run by two adoring brothers whose lifestyles and politics clash fundamentally, falls particularly flat. If the aim was to conjure up the house of a Right Bank family like the Polignacs or the Prousts, it fails. The fascinating moral hazards posed by owning a French automotive business during the war could have really set this novel apart, and yet they seem barely touched upon after the heyday of European auto racing ends with the German invasion. A few plot points do turn on Rossignol cars--and what a disappointing, cliché�d brand name!-- but somehow the family business story ends up tasting stale rather than fresh. Historical figures in French auto manufacturing and racing between the wars, like the van Zuylen van Nyeveldts, are much more interesting than these imagined ones.

How could such detailed research produce such a badly nuanced narrative that often borders on inauthentic, and ends up being ultimately unsatisfying? One need only read a good primary source, like Agnes Humbert's gripping memoir, Resistance, to get an idea of the bar Francine Prose needed to clear in order to justify these fictional accounts by heroines of the French Resistance.

And where's the suspense that such a tale promises? Lives do, after all, hang in the balance. We wait for the paths of all the characters to cross at moral decision points. But when lives do intersect, there's little compelling conflict, let alone stolen bliss, and so the stories are predictable, weakening the impact. We don't understand these characters any better after they have taken action than before. The characters and their dilemmas don't linger after turning the page or shutting the book. In a book about the effects of thwarted love, why does it matter that one person never desires another, or loses desire, or suffers unrequited love, or loves a monster? The novel never answers this critical question.

What is the purpose, for instance, of introducing the failed love affair between the male American writer and the female French language tutor? His enduring love for her, following their breakup, is commented on two generations later by his grandchildren. And yet it has zero impact on the story, particularly on his friendship with his rival, the Hungarian photographer, and it should. In the same vein, the baroness's unrequited love for the Hungarian photographer teaches her very little and, in terms of plot, goes nowhere.

This undigested novel suffers from too much explication. Too little raw, direct conflict between adversarial or love-crossed characters. Too little imagination in a work that cries out for imagination. And too little tenderness and heartache in a novel about the effects of thwarted love.

I yawned my way through this entire book, when I so wanted to be on the edge of my seat.

[Mary Lins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been a fan of Francine Prose since reading her wonderful and witty novel, “Blue Angel”, many years ago. Her latest, “Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932” is magnificent; full of wonderful characters, unusually quirky settings, and strong (some more reliable than others) narrative voices.

The novel proffers a unique WWII story told from various perspectives. Gabor Tsenyi is a young Hungarian photographer struggling to make a name for himself in the Parisian art scene. His patroness is Lily de Rossignol, a former Hollywood star now married to a Baron and a luxury car manufacturer. Gabor frequents the Chameleon Club, where men dress like women and women dress like men (I pictured it as similar to the Kit Kat club in the movie “Cabaret”, although that club was in Berlin). Yvonne, a chanteuse, owns the club and protects her customers. Lionel Maine is an American journalist with a hedonistic bent. He introduces Suzanne Dunois to Gabor. Years in the future, Suzanne’s niece, Nathalie, is writing a very unusual biography of a woman named Louisianne (Lou) Villars, who appears, dressed in a tuxedo, in one of Gabor’s photographs which shares the title of the novel. Who exactly IS Lou? Is she an athlete, a bare-knuckle boxer, a race car driver, a mechanic, a spy and/or a war criminal?

While Lou’s is just one of the stories in the novel, it is the most enigmatic. Lou is seduced by Hitler’s world-view during the 1939 Olympics and we follower her descent from there. Each narrative voice provides a different perspective, and each contains just the right amount of ominous foreshadowing and unreliability.

What is the truth? The novel has been compared to the classic film “Rashomon” which tells a core story from wildly opposing “eye witness” accounts. In the end, I don’t suppose it matters who’s version is the most accurate, when the journey has been so interesting.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vaguely disappointing. The story was interesting, and the manner of telling it, from varied points of view, should have really sparked it. I mean, a chronically lovelorn and disappointed cross-dressing French patriot turned Nazi collaborator? With supporting characters that included a Brassai-like photographer of Paris' seamier side, a sexy but celibate countess, and a Henry Miller type literary rake who managed to cash in on his disappointment with the bright lights of late 1930s Paris, a neurotic and possibly unhinged biographer? But there was something a bit arms'-length to the whole thing. Even with a great cast of characters, and knowing that each was supposed to be unreliable in his or her own way, the storytelling was lacking a certain traction; it never quite carried me along in the way I would have liked.

This is more like 3-1/2 stars, because I stuck around till the end and never quite flagged in my attentions. But I'd really hoped for a bit more passion.

[Isabel Allende · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is a fascinating historical novel set in Paris before and during the Second World War. I liked the way Prose weaves several different stories and characters to create a rich tapestry of a very interesting time.

[Robert Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the preface of Francine Prose's astonishing Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, the author tells how a Brassai photograph, "Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle, 1932," inspired her novel about "art, love, evil, money, auto racing, espionage, insomnia, seduction and betrayal–and the way that history changes depending on who tells it." That sounds comprehensive and fascinating, but Lovers at the Chameleon Club is so much more: part loving critique of human frailty, part celebration of heroism, part cautionary tale, and, all told, a ripping yarn.

Presented through letters, memoirs, and a pulpy biography of one of its characters, Lovers at the Chameleon Club chronicles the intersecting lives of several Parisians occupying a timeline stretching from the heady, Cabaret-era `20s to the fascist Occupation of the `40s. We meet Lionel Maine, a Henry Miller-ish expat writer, through his essays and yellow journalism. Maine's undervalued (but not for long) girlfriend, Suzanne, speaks through a tantalizing memoir "to be destroyed in the event of the author's death." The autobiography of arts patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol offers the upper-crust perspective. Through letters home, Brassai-inspired photographer Gabor Tsenyi wrestles with success guilt while simultaneously seeking money from his parents.

The locus around which everything turns is the magnetic Louisette "Lou" Villars, a lesbian racecar driver turned Gestapo agent. Lou is an analogue of the very real Violette Morris, the "butch" half of the couple in the aforementioned Brassai photo. Like Morris, Lou is an Olympic hopeful who dares to wear men's clothes in public, resulting in the revocation of her racing license by the Vichy government. Also like Morris, Lou is unlucky in love, and, oddly, captures the fancy of Hitler, who admires her athleticism and enlists her as an effective undercover agent. Most of Lou's story comes via her modern-day biographer, a narcissistic high school teacher who compulsively inserts herself into her work, and whose depictions of Nazi-era pomp are frighteningly seductive.

Prose varies all of these voices with great skill, conveying widely divergent personalities and showing how storytelling is every human's innate, mysteriously powerful tool for making sense of both shadows and light. More often than not, the novel's narrators are only dimly aware of how they add artifice to their versions of events, yet Prose enables us to see this process in the characters and, ultimately, in ourselves.

For all its sophistication, Lovers at the Chameleon Club zips briskly along. Late in the game, when the horrors of the Third Reich infect the cobbled Parisian streets and our characters must choose sides, the intensity becomes gut-wrenching. Not all these folks are admirable, even ones we've come to like. Some rationalize in the face of casual evil, and it's heartbreaking. This is where Prose's work delivers its biggest payload. Anyone aware of history knows, intellectually, about the Holocaust and the rise of fascist Europe. Heroes existed, but much more common were regular people, like us, standing by, paralyzed, numb. When we feel that numbness now, we fear, idly, that such evil could rise again. Lovers at the Chameleon Club is that rare art that remedies this disconnection. Prose's work serves as connective tissue to a visceral, emotional experience of our shared humanity; we ache for people we have never met, we perceive more acutely a genuine darkness against which we must be vigilant, and when we close the book, we're sensitized, and ready.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very enjoyable and riveting story taking place in Paris before and during the Nazi occupation. It was written as a partial biography of Lou Villars, a presumably fictional French lesbian auto racer turned Nazi informant and later Gestapo torturer. The "biography" was being written by the supposed grand niece of one of the main characters and Resistance heroine, Suzanne Denois Tsenyi (wife of the main character, a famed Hungarian photographer working in Paris at the time named Gabor Tsenyi. Further complicating our cast of characters is Gabor's patroness and originally Lou Villars' employer, baroness Lily de Rossignol. The lives and adventures of Lou, Suzanne, Gabor, the baroness, and a host of odd folks that frequent the bawdy cabaret Chameleon Club are a very interesting backdrop to wartime Paris. Unfortunately, the book was ruined for me by the second to the last chapter, a letter from Suzanne Denois Tsenyi stating that most of the events of the story were fictionalized or sensationalized by her "grand niece". I disliked that ending so much that my rating went down from 5 stars to 3. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in WWII era period pieces but would suggest they stop reading before that buzz kill of a letter chapter.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. In order to fulfill those expectations, it had better be spectacular. The beginning is promising, introducing many characters being given enough time to breathe and develop. But the main character is Paris and its effect on people attracted to its ambience and the others it attracts. The Chameleon Club is a metaphor for the City of Lights, allowing its patrons to be who they want to be without sacrificing their originality, and if their memories and stories don't always jibe, they can always blame Paris.

[Abbey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe more of a 3.5, but it was an impressive look at one of the most fascinating eras in Paris. Each perspective was unique and brought something new to the story, and though it was a bit slow, I enjoyed it! This may be the start of a tradition where I read books set in Paris every May...

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes the story exceeds the abilities of the teller. Francine Prose is a talented writer, but her imaginative reconstruction of the life of the French bisexual athlete and traitor Violette Morris (renamed Lou Villars in the historical novel) is less successful than it could have been. Prose originally considered writing a biography of Morris but decided that a fictionalized account offered more possibilities. Despite the more or less accurate evocation of the Paris of the years leading up to and including the Occupation by the Germans in WWII, the novel fails to bring many of its characters to life, including Villars. Told through excerpts of fictional published works, unpublished memoirs, and letters, parts of the novel are more successful than others. The character Lionel Maine, based on Henry Miller, seems real, and Prose has a good command of Miller's style that provides some entertaining reading. On the other hand, the letters to his parents written by the character Gabor Tsenyi, a Hungarian photographer living in Paris (based on the artist Gyula Halász, known by his pseudonym, Brassaï), are annoying in their incessantly whinging tone. In Nathalie Dunois, the supposed biographer of Lou Villars and the epitome of the unreliable narrator, Prose has created an alter ego that allows her to explain (and exculpate?) her altering of historical facts to suit the trajectory of the plot. Unfortunately, Villars herself comes off as flat and unsympathetic, despite Prose's efforts to provide some psychological insights into her antisocial behaviors that led to her betrayal of her country and death at the hands of the Resistance. Despite my objections, however, I found the novel mostly entertaining and would recommend it to anyone interested in Paris before and during the Occupation. Consulting a collection of Brassaï's photographs will add to the reading experience.

[Sally Koslow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Presented through diary entries, letters, memoir and biography chapters and newspaper articles, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 retells the exploits of a circle of bohemian Parisians—and a few Nazis—linked by their connection to a tawdry nightclub featuring acts by cross-dressers. Francine Prose’s characters—the novel features about eight voices—are so artfully crafted you will be surprised to find, when you inevitably Google them, that they are drawn from her imagination and that this isn’t a book in the tradition of The Paris Wife or Finding Frank.

The writing is strong but accessible. For example, “Any male who pretends not to hate women’s tears is a coward, a liar, a traitor to his sex… Women’s tears can drip on us and dissolve us like acid. More poisonous than venom, tears are the mustard gas in the trenches of the war of women against men.” (Caveat: There are a fewvword choices ripped from 1970, not 1932, i.e., "f life was handing the Rossignols lemons, they’d make citron press."

The book is told in three parts, with considerable, intentional foreshadowing, contraction and repetition. Who's telling the truth? In life, do we ever know? As to pacing, the middle sags a bit, leaving the reader hungry for more suspense, eager to get to higher-drama sections about the Occupation, Nazi-collaboration and the Resistance. Adolph, show up already! But all in all, this is superb book, especially for anyone interested in World War II, historical truth and half-truth or simply imaginative storytelling.

[Dehlia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, Kerri Miller, you really sold me on this, and let me down. I love historical fiction, especially WWII. I heard an in-depth interview with F. Prose on MPR over a year ago and was immediately interested in reading this book. It sounded just incredible and unbelievable, yet based on true events. I got it on my kindle, intentionally, which is always an obstacle as I prefer paper pages. Is that what set me up for disappointment? I don't think so. I brought it on my trip to Machu Picchu, many long days and nights of travel, and yet, I couldn't get into it. I set it aside for months. I picked it back up as life settled down, yet found every excuse to read any other book that I could. Finally, with book club pending (my book club for my lousy book pick!) I forced two long days of getting it down. Even reading in 100 and 150 page chunks did not help…

What was it about this book that couldn't catch me? Was it that the heroine was evil? No, I actually didn't mind Lou Villars. It was the writing style; the chop. I usually do well with varied voices and jumping between time periods but these voices, these transitions were just clumsy and abrupt and damn near impossible to follow. It was such a distraction to the story being told, and I really wanted to hear the story -- it's a fascinating combination of circumstances and characters, but the writing... There was no climax, no resolution, and the ending was the oddest, out of place fragment. Is this because it took five years to write? Oh, I was disappointed. Tell me what you think, what did I miss?