The Nightingale- A Novel by Kristin Hannah - 2015 - 532 Pages - A Paris in July 2022 Post

 

The Nightingale- A Novel by Kristin Hannah - 2015 - 532 Pages - A Paris in July 2022 Post

Paris in July 2022

This is my eighth year participating in a wonderful event, Paris in July.  The event hosts are Reader Buzz and Thyme for Tea.  Posts on any and all things Paris are welcome.  You can share your memories of a trip to Paris, your favorite French recipes or restaurants, art in the  Louvre, your favorite set in Paris Movies (mine are Ninotchka and Midnight in Paris).  Of course the French literary masters as well as contemporary writers are great subjects.

1. Yiddish Paris by Nicholas Underwood - 2022
2. After the Romanovs- Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque to Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport - 2022
3. “Late Hour” -A Set in Paris Short Story by Ivan Bunin - 1938- translated by David Humphries -included in The Gentleman from San Francisco and other Stories-- 
4. The Paris Tattoo” - An Essay by Ann Patchett - from her essay collection These Precious Days- 2022
5. “Spindleshanks” - a set in Paris Short story by Shasha Chorny - 1932- a Russian Emirgé

The Nightingale- A Novel by Kristin Hannah - 2015 - 532 Pages

A Number One New York Times Bestseller 

2015 Goodreads Readers Choice for Best Historical Fiction

Movie premier December 23, 2022

Based in The World War Two Years, The Nighingale is a very moving account of How The lives of two French sisters are impacted by the German take over of France.

The storyline opens in a quiet village in rural France. Vianne Mauriac’s husband has just joined with neighbors to enlist in the French army.  Everyone is convinced the Germans will quickly be defeated, that they will never make it into France. But soon the Germans capture France, Nazis are everywhere. A Nazi Officer is billeted at the home of Vianne, with her and her children.  Food is rationed for the French, while the Germans feast.  Jews suffer horribly.

Isabelle, 18, the younger sister, is a free spirited rebel.  It is all she can do not to curse the Nazis which would get her shot. Their father, a widower, fought for France in WW One.  Seemingly he cares only about his drinking.  Isabelle meets and falls in Love with a partisan, she leaves for Paris to join the resistance. We are given a marvelous picture of life in Paris under the Germans.  

“With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.” From Goodreads

The Nightingale is a profoundly moving work, depicting with matching veracity, the worst and the best of humanity in occupied France.   

KRISTIN HANNAH

Kristin Hannah is the award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels including the international blockbuster, The Nightingale, which was named Goodreads Best Historical fiction novel for 2015 and won the coveted People's Choice award for best fiction.

www.kristinhannah.com

Mel Ulm

“Spindleshanks” - A Set in Paris Short Story by Sasha Chorny -1931. Translated by Maria Bolshteyn - 2017 - included in Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky - edited by Bryan Karetnyk -2017

 

“Spindleshanks” - A Set in Paris Short Story by Sasha Chorny -1931. Translated by Maria Bolshteyn  - 2017 - included in Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky - edited by Bryan Karetnyk -2017

Paris in July 2022 

This is my eighth year participating in a wonderful event, Paris in July.  The event hosts are Reader Buzz and Thyme for Tea.  Posts on any and all things Paris are welcome.  You can share your memories of a trip to Paris, your favorite French recipes or restaurants, art in the  Louvre, your favorite set in Paris Movies (mine are Ninotchka and Midnight in Paris).  Of course the French literary masters as well as contemporary writers are great subjects.

My Prior Paris in July 2022 Posts

1. Yiddish Paris by Nicholas Underwood - 2022
2. After the Romanovs- Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque to Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport - 2022
3. Late Hour” -A Set in Paris Short Story by Ivan Bunin - 1938- translated by David Humphries -included in The Gentleman from San Francisco and other Stories-- 
4. The Paris Tattoo” - An Essay by Ann Patchett - from her essay collection These Precious Days- 2022

“Spindleshanks” is a Russian Emigre married man’s deeply felt litnany of complaints about living in Paris has negatively impacted Russian women, particularly his wife. He is talking to an old friend who has just arrived in Paris.

“You remember what my Natasha looked like back in Narva. A meadow blossom! Glowing with health. She really turned heads on the street: all those curves – natural, no padding! Round shoulders, apple cheeks and so forth … A regular cello!…. Take Rubens, for example, or our own Kustodiev, or some sensible ancient Greek sculptor – they’re all on the same page. If it’s Venus you’re depicting, then make her look like Venus…But now … Have you seen what my Natasha did to herself, following everyone else’s lead? Started out as a beautiful Houri and finished off looking like one of the Furies. ‘Why did you plane yourself away like this?’..

Ok we get the idea. Paris has for Russian men made their women want to be Spindleshanks, an arhachic term for a long  logged skin and bones woman, just opposite of what Russian men like.

SASHA CHORNY (1880–1932) was the pen name of Alexander Mikhailovich Glickberg. A satirical poet, short-story writer and children’s writer, he enjoyed immense popularity in pre-Revolutionary Russia. He served at the Front during the First World War and was opposed to the 1917 October Revolution. In 1918 he and his wife left Russia for Lithuania. In spring 1920 they moved to Berlin. Following a brief stay in Rome in 1923, he moved to Paris, and in 1929 he purchased a plot in La Favière, where he spent the last years of his life.

Mel Ulm

Call me Zelda by Erika Robuck- 2011 - 339 pages

Call me Zelda by Erika Robuck- 2011 - 339 pages

This is sixth work of historical fiction by Erika Robuck I have so far read. She has published seven novels.

My first five  were 

The Invisible Woman - 2021 - set largely in occupied France during World War Two

Sisters of Night and Fog -2022.  Set also largely in France during WW Two

Fallen Beauty - 2014. Set in upstate New York in the 1920s and 1930s - focusing in part on the poet Edna Saint Vincent Millay

Receive Me Falling. - 2009- Set mostly on the Sugar Cane Plantations on the Caribbean Island of Natal.  Shifting from the 1830s to the 1990s.

Hemingway’s Girl - 2012. - focusing mostly on his Key West Years 

Zelda Fitzgerald 

Born: July 24, 1900, Montgomery, Alabama

Died: March 10, 1948 - Asheville, North Carolina

Spouse: F. Scott Fitzgerald (m. 1920–1940)

The Great Gatsby - 1925

Call me Zelda is narrated by Anna, who first meets Zelda Fitzgerald while working as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital.  Anna is in her late twenties,made a widow by World War One. She lost her daughter when she was five, her only child, to pneumonia.  The focus of the book is on her very long involvement with Zelda and her husband as well as developments in Anna’s own life.

There is a lot of space devoted to Zelda’s time in psychiatry hospitals, her diaries and her paintings.  We get a good luck at progressive mental healthcare in the 1920s and early 1930s.  Zelda’s husband comes across as a serious alcoholic whose behavior toward Zelda fluctuates from loving to abusive.

There are long extracts from fictional diaries of Zelda.  We follow Anna through her own romances and eventual happy marriage.

“Erika Robuck is the national bestselling author of The Invisible Woman, Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest Essay Collection, Author in Progress 

In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year, and she resides there with her husband, three sons, and a spunky miniature schnauzer.” From Erikarobuck.com

I hope to read her The House of Hawthorne soon

Mel Ulm

 

“The Paris Tattoo” - An Essay by Ann Patchett - from her essay collection These Precious Days- 2022 - A Paris in July Post

Paris In July 2022

 

“The Paris Tattoo” - An Essay by Ann Patchett - from her essay collection These Precious Days- 2022 - A Paris in July Post

This is my eighth year participating in a wonderful event, Paris in July.  The event hosts are Reader Buzz and Thyme for Tea.  Posts on any and all things Paris are welcome.  You can share your memories of a trip to Paris, your favorite French recipes or restaurants, art in the  Louvre, your favorite set in Paris Movies (mine are Ninotchka and Midnight in Paris).  Of course the French literary masters as well as contemporary writers are great subjects.

My Official Paris in July Video. The Summer I Read Colette

My Prior Paris in July 2022 Posts

1. Yiddish Paris by Nicholas Underwood - 2022
2. After the Romanovs- Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque to Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport - 2022
3. Late Hour” -A Set in Paris Short Story by Ivan Bunin - 1938- translated by David Humphries -included in The Gentleman from San Francisco and other Stories-- 

“The Paris Tattoo” fits in very well with my other three posts.  It is about people from outside France, speaking little French, experiencing Paris. In this case it is Ann Patchett, at 19, spending a few weeks in Paris on a small students budget along with her best friend. It is 1983. They stay in a small fourth floor apartment.  They have decided to eat in a different restaurant for each meal.  They know French food is a world class marvel.  Instead they end up frequently eating in the same cafe. They become fascinated by two waitresses who seem to them very sophisticated and ever so French. Ann notices one has a small tattoo upon one of the waitresses. Of course the girls begin to ponder the idea of getting one.  Ann ponders a small tattoo of a cow, on her hip.

This essay captured for me perfectly the feel in my official Paris in July Video, The Summer I read Colette.

I look forward to reading all the essays in These Precious Days.

ANN PATCHETT is the author of eight novels, four works of nonfiction, and two children’s books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women’s Prize in the U.K., and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her most recent novel, The Dutch House, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. TIME magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the co-owner of Parnassus Books.

Mel Ulm

“Late Hour” -A Set in Paris Short Story by Ivan Bunin - 1938- translated by David Richards -included The Gentleman from San Francisco and other Stories-- A Post for Paris in July 2022

 

“Late Hour” -A Set in Paris Short Story by Ivan Bunin - 1938- translated by David Humphries -included in The Gentleman from San Francisco and other Stories-- A Post for Paris in July 2022 

This will be my eighth year participating in a wonderful event, Paris in July.  The event hosts are Reader Buzz and Thyme for Tea.  Posts on any and all things Paris are welcome.  You can share your memories of a trip to Paris, your favorite French recipes or restaurants, art in the  Louvre, your favorite set in Paris Movies (mine are Ninotchka and Midnight in Paris).  Of course the French literary masters as well as contemporary writers are great subjects.

Last year I posted on six short stories by Russian Émigré writers who moved to Paris after the fall of the Tsars, among others works.  Ivan Bunin is given illuminating coverage in After the Romanovs.

Paris in July is an excellent way to meet bloggers outside the Book Blog world, to expand your knowledge of Parisian history and culture.

Ivan Bunin

October 22, 1870 - Born Voronezh, Russia

March 28, 1920 - moves to Paris where he Will spend The rest of his Life, with countryside interludes

1933 - first Russian to win the Nobel Prize

November 8, 1953 - dies in Paris 

Bunin moved to Paris in 1920, his heart broken by the fall of The Romanovs from power in Russia.  He, like many Russian Émigrés, spent the rest of his life dreaming of the old days and fantasying about the restoration of a Tsar, along with the return of his family estate.  

“Late Hour”, set in Paris, is narrated by a widower wandering the streets of Paris, imagining it as Moscow in the old days. As he crosses the Seine on a bridge,he begins to search for the home in which his late wife grew up. He prays he can kiss her feet in heaven.  

Mel Ulm

After the Romanovs- Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque to Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport - 2022

 

After the Romanovs- Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque to Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport - 2022

This will be my eighth year participating in a wonderful event, Paris in July.  The event hosts are Reader Buzz and Thyme for Tea.  Posts on any and all things Paris are welcome.  You can share your memories of a trip to Paris, your favorite French recipes or restaurants, art in the  Louvre, your favorite set in Paris Movies (mine are Ninotchka and Midnight in Paris).  Of course the French literary masters as well as contemporary writers are great subjects.

Last year I posted on six short stories by Russian Émigré writers who loved to Paris after the fall of the Tsars among others works.  Three of them are given illuminating coverage 

in After the Romanovs.

Paris in July is an excellent way to meet bloggers outside the Book Blog world, to expand your knowledge of Parisian history and culture.

Like those depicted in  my first post for Paris in July, Yiddish Paris by Nicolas Underwood, Russians moved to Paris because they felt they no longer had a safe home, free from the threat of death.

The book opens in 1900 at the most elite restaurant in Paris.  Among the clientele are Russian Grand Dukes and their French Courtesan mistresses. (This courtesy title was borne by the sons and male-line grandsons of the Emperor of all the Russias, along with the style of His Imperial Highness. They were not sovereigns, but members and dynasts of the House of the reigning emperor. From Wikipedia) Grand Dukes often had no actual responsibilities, this combined with great wealth, arranged marriages and the eagerness of the French to cater to them drew them to Paris. Some bought mansions and gave huge tips, lavishing fortunes on a French mistress .  Then came the Russian Revolution and everything changed.

Some had the foresight to bring liquid wealth to Paris, some ended up as waiters or cab drivers.  Many of the Romanov women became employed as seamstress or models. Most Russian exiles never  stopped believing the Bolsheviks would be overturned and they could return.

Soon after the fall of the Tsar 1000s of ordinary Russians moved to Paris, struggling to fit in, speaking no French and looking for work.  2500 became cab drivers, a relatively desirable occupation. 1000s worked in Renault and Citroen factories.  Richer Russians did try to help those in poverty.  As the French economy went into decline, some resentment was felt toward Russians taking jobs.  Younger Russians born in France had little nostalgia for Czarist days.  Rappaprt estimates there were about 75,000 Émigrés at the peak.

After the Romanovs is an excellent work of narrative non-fiction, very well documented and written.

Details on Rappaports background and other books can be found here

https://helenrappaport.com/about/

Mel Ulm

 

 

Shirley Hazzard - A Writing Life by Brigitta Olubas - 2022 - 576 pages

 

Shirley Hazzard - A Writing Life by Brigitta Olubas - 2022 - 576 pages 

Shirley Hazzard

The Evening of The Holiday - 1966

The Bay of Noon - 1970

The Transit of Venus - 1989 (considered her greatest work)

The Great Fire - 2003

Died: December 12, 2016, Manhattan, New York City, USA

Partner: Francis Steegmuller (1963 to his death in 1994)

Shirley Hazzard - A Writing Life by Brigitta Olubas is a truly wonderful literary biography.  

Brigitta Olubas, Hazzard’s authorized biographer, draws on Hazzard’s fiction—which itself drew on her lived experiences—as well as her extensive archive of letters, diaries, and notebooks, and on memories of her surviving friends and family, to create this vibrant portrait of an exceptional woman. Born in Australia she was truly a citizen of a world now largely gone.

Beginning in her younger days in Australia then moving to Hong Kong with her parents where she began her first of numerous romances, to her middle age and marriage to the Flaubert scholar Francis Steegmuller to her old age and descent into dementia in her 80s. She was friends with numerous famous literary figures.  The Isle of Capri became the home of Hazzard and her husband.

Brigitta Oulbas goes into great detail on how Hazzard’s life experiences  influenced her writings.  She worked for The United Nations in New York City.  She published numerous articles criticizing the United Nations.

Anyone at all interested in the wonderful novels and short stories of Shirley Hazzard will love this book.

About the Author

Brigitta Olubas is a professor of English at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She published the first scholarly monograph of Shirley Hazzard’s writing and recently edited two volumes of Shirley Hazzard's work: We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think: Selected Essays and Collected Stories

Mel Ulm

Yiddish Paris : Staging Nation and Community in interwar France by Nicholas Underwood. - 2022 - Paris in July 2022

 

Sign up page For Paris in July 2022

Yiddish Paris : Staging Nation and Community in interwar France by Nicholas Underwood. - 2022 - Paris in July 2022

This will be my eighth year participating in a wonderful event, Paris in July.  The event hosts are Reader Buzz and Thyme for Tea.  Posts on any and all things Paris are welcome.  You can share your memories of a trip to Paris, your favorite French recipes or restaurants, art in the  Louvre, your favorite set in Paris Movies (mine are Ninotchka and Midnight in Paris).  Of course the French literary masters as well as contemporary writers are great subjects.

Last year I posted on six short stories by Russian Émigré writers who loved to Paris after the fall of the Tsars among others works.

Paris in July is an excellent way to meet bloggers outside the Book Blog world, to expand your knowledge of Parisian history and culture.  

Paris was the escape destination for Yiddish speaking Russian and Eastern European Jews in the 1920s and 30s seeking refuge from vicious pograms. .  Some academics and social activists arrived fluent in French but the vast majority of arrivals spoke Yiddish as well as Russian 

or Polish but no French,  arriving with few resources beyond a willingness to work very hard, a commitment to Ashkenazi traditions, and their families.  In his very well documented Yiddish Paris : Staging Nation and Community in interwar France Nick Underwood details how Yiddish Émigrés integrated into Parisian society, created organizations to support left  wing political goals, taught new arrivals French, helped each others find jobs.  As France is taken over by the Germans many Yiddish speaking Jews were sent to death camps while the luckier of richer ones escaped to New York City.  

There are chapters on The Yiddish Theater in Paris, Yiddish Newspapers, Parisian Yiddish culture on the world stage, and more.

I highly endorse Yiddish Paris : Staging Nation and Community in interwar France by Nicholas Underwood for anyone interested in Paris between the wars.  Anyone with a serious interest in the Yiddish diaspora from Eastern Europe and Russia should treat this as required reading.

Nick Underwood

Expertise

Modern Jewish history, Modern European history, modern French history, cultural history, Yiddish studies, performance studies, history of fascism and antifascism, urban history.

Professional Experience

Nick has taught courses on modern Jewish, European, and World history at Sonoma State University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Napa Valley College. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the GHI Pacific Regional Office at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.  He also serves as managing editor for the journals East European Jewish Affairs and American Jewish History and as project manager for the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project 

Education

• Ph.D., University of Colorado, Boulder
• M.A., American University
• B.A., Florida State University”

From https://www.collegeofidaho.edu/directory/nick-underwood

Mel Ulm

The Reading Life Review- June 2022

 

The Reading Life is a multicultural

book blog, committed to Literary Globalism 

Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among our Interests

June Authors

Column One

1. Ivan Bunin - Russia to Paris - Noble Prize 1933
2. Ann Leckie - USA- highly regarded Fantasy writer -first appearance on The Reading Life
3. Nicolai Levkov - Russia - classic 19th century works 

Column Two

1. Alexander Pushkin - Russia 
2. Nuala O’Connor - Ireland - featured numerous times on The Reading Life
3. Ovida Yu- Singapore- author numerous novels and stories- first appearance on The Reading Life

Column Three

1. Kermit Pattinson- USA - author Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeletons and the Origins of Humankind - a marvelous work of narrative nonfiction- first appearance on The Reading Life
2. Neil Gaiman - UK - very highly prolific highly regarded S/F author- first appearance on The Reading Life
3. Ken Liu- USA - highly regarded S/F writer - first appearance on RL

In June we posted on six works by men, three by women. Three of the authors, Russians all, are deceased. Five writers were featured for the first time in June.

Home countries of June Authors

1. Russia - 3
2. USA - 3
3. Singapore-  1
4. Ireland- 1
5. UK - 1

Blog Stats

There has been 6,723,686 pages views since inception.

There are currently 4090 posts online.

The top most viewed posts in June were all on short stories.

Top Home countries of visitor for June 

1. USA
2. India
3. The Philippines 
4. The Netherlands 
5. Canada
6. The UK
7. Morocco - first time in top ten 
8. Russia 
9. Germany 
10. Indonesia 

Short Stories I Read in June upon which there is no 

Post 

1. BOILED BONES AND BLACK EGGS by NGHI VO published in The Year’s Best Dark Horror & Fantasy: Volume 1. Copyright © 2020 
2. The Newlywed’s Window by Husnah Mad-hy - published in The 2022 Mukana Press Anthology of African Writing
3. The Cannon by Kelly Link - published in her collection Magic for Beginners - 2006
4. Haunt by Carmen Macado - included in The Year’s Best Horror and Family- 2020
5. Troll Bridge by Terry Pratchett - included in The Modern Book of Classic Fantasy - 2020
6. Stag by Karen Russell - 2022

I also read Bicycles, Bloomers and Great War Rationing Recipes: The Life and Times of Dorothy Peel OBE Kindle Edition by Vicky Straker.

I also read An Empire Called Memory by Arkady Martine, the 2020 Hugo Award Winner.

In July I will post on a few books or stories set in Paris