Play Book Tag discussion

Lucien, a modernist architect, chose to remain in Paris under the Occupation, but is struggling. There has been no work and money is running out. When he's ultimately approached by a wealthy French industrialist to design secretly a hiding place with the promise of a factory design commission for the Germans, Lucian takes the work, which leads to much more similar secret and open projects. Lucien is not a hero and in fact at first is not only a coward but also a bigot. With Lucien as the centra protagonist, Belfoure takes us on a journey through Occupied Paris in 1942, with good and evil on full display, as well as all the shades of grey called survival. At the same time, we watch the evolution of Lucien and others -- some to greater good and some to deeper evil. I thought the overall story was effective and provided a truer picture of Parisians under Occupation than is often given.

I actually give 3.5 stars rounded down to 3. There was something about the writing itself, and even the structure of the story, that just doesn't sit well. The writing often seem too simplistic, dumbed down, given the complexity of the story. There were too many torture scenes. There may well have been too may secondary characters. What shone: Belfoure's interweaving of architecture, both in the modernist Bauhaus inspired work by Lucien, and in descriptions of some of the magnificent buildings still standing in Paris, like the Biblioteque Nationale Richelieu. Belfoure, an architect, has a gift for writing about architecture in fiction and making it integral to the story.

I also have to say that reading this now, while Putin and Russia wage war on Ukraine, gives this historical fiction an immediacy, a firm base in reality.