Debut
I am struggling with this review, although I liked the premise of the book.
Sylvie is grieving for her deceased lover of 30 years and finds a mysterious envelope in his desk with the letter "M" written on it. She then tries to find out what the envelope means and why Julian never told her about it.
Her lover, Julian, is a ghost who is watching over her.
What I had a difficult time with was the writing style of this author.
Her timeline did not always flow for me, she interjected French words with no translation and characters were added with no introduction.
A lot of French history was mentioned but since I don't have much knowledge of that history, I felt lost quite a bit of the time. The main history that was in the book was about the horrible Jewish round-up by the French people in July of 1942. I first learned of that atrocity in "Sarah's Key"by
Tatiana de Rosnay which for me, was a better told story.
GoodReads summary:
In the summer of 1989, while all of Paris is poised to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution, Sylvie mourns the loss of her lover, Julien, and is unable to find solace in the music that has always been her refuge. But when she accidentally dislodges an envelope hidden in Julien's desk, she finds an enigmatic note from a stranger and feels compelled to meet this woman who might hold the key to Julien's past and to the story of the missing child he could not find in his lifetime. Julien's sister and one of her daughters perished in the Holocaust; but Julien held out hope that the other daughter managed to escape. Julien had secretly devoted years to tracking his niece, and now Sylvie picks up where he left off.
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