Les Parisiennes

August 8, 2016
Sebba (That Woman), a former Reuters foreign correspondent, burrows into the lives of women in the City of Light during WWII to reveal their captivating and complicated stories. Rather than simply presenting the women as collaborators or resisters, Sebba shows the impossible choices they faced, which hardly seemed like choices at all. This is the book’s heart, and it pulsates from start to finish. That focus is slightly marred by Sebba’s broad interpretation of “Parisiennes.” She uses it to describe women who lived in the city, including French citizens and noncitizens alike, and those who didn’t spend the entire war within the confines of the city. It’s logical to include noncitizens such as Irène Némirovsky and Noor Inayat Khan, who’d both lived in France for about 20 years before the war started. But passages on the “Grey Mice”—German women who came to work in Paris during the war—belong in another book. While extending the story outside of Paris allows Sebba more range in discussing the dangers of Resistance work and the devastating deportations, it blurs what could have been an incisive, powerful portrait of an imperiled city. Sebba’s clear-eyed narrative concludes, correctly, that these women deserve understanding, not judgment. Photos. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander.