Never Anyone But You

February 15, 2018

On the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands, two women stand in their garden worrying about the future and contemplating their past. From the moment that Lucie and Suzanne lay eyes on each other in 1909, they form a fierce attachment. Although they are regarded by their small village as eccentrics, affecting mannish clothing and adopting new masculine names (Claude and Marcel), they fit right into the Bohemian Paris of the 1920s. In literary salons and gatherings, they join a group of Surrealists and mingle with artists and writers like Dali, Miro, and Hemingway. When fascism begins its spread across Europe, the women decamp to the isle of Jersey, where they purchase a seaside villa and befriend the locals. Once the Nazis arrive, however, the women bravely undertake a dangerous propaganda campaign aimed at undermining the German cause. VERDICT With a dash of Midnight in Paris and a hint of Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer's The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, this part love story, part thriller is sure to captivate.--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 7, 2018
The evocative latest from Thomson (Katherine Carlyle) follows two unsung female French World War II heroes and traces their lives from their teen years to their deaths. The book’s narrator, Suzanne Malherbe, almost 17, meets the charismatic and mature 14-year-old Lucie Schwob in their hometown of Nantes in 1909; they bond immediately and become lovers after a few years. Lucie, a free spirit, reinvents herself as Claude Courlis (later Cahun), and Suzanne follows suit, calling herself Marcel Moore, both reasoning that the male names better suit their independent identities. In Paris in the 1920s and ’30s the two (Suzanne a photographer and illustrator, Lucie a writer and model for Suzanne) hobnob with Surrealist artists and writers and later move to the British island of Jersey off the Normandy coast, where they create a clandestine anti-Nazi propaganda campaign during the German occupation. The push and pull between the rock-steady Suzanne and the more volatile and sensitive Lucie is a constant undercurrent, but the strength of their relationship is never more powerful than during their face-off with the Nazis and their subsequent survival. In this seamless and comprehensive tale, Thompson shines a light on two impressive and memorable life stories.

April 1, 2018
An intense clandestine love affair between two Frenchwomen during the first half of the 20th century spans art and literature, war and imprisonment, madness and devotion.In his 10th novel, British writer Thomson (Katherine Carlyle, 2015, etc.) traces the intertwined biographies of two historical challengers of convention: Suzanne Malherbe, aka Marcel Moore, and Lucie Schwob, aka Claude Cahun. Their teenage attraction, which blossomed into adult love, was shielded by the fact that Suzanne's widowed mother and Lucie's divorced father fell in love and married, transforming the women into stepsisters. The daughter of a schizophrenic mother, Claude is impulsive and volatile, anorexic, sometimes suicidal, a cross-dresser who explores creativity in various forms, including acting and writing. Marcel, an illustrator and photographer, is the more grounded, less wayward of the two. After growing up in Nantes, the two women move to Paris in 1920, where they mingle with Dadaists, surrealists, and the avant-garde. Dalí makes an appearance, as do Hemingway, André Breton, and others. A sequence of holidays spent in the Channel Isles leads to a decision to move there in 1937, but the Nazi occupation in 1940 destroys the women's idyllic life. For the next four years, Claude and Marcel perform their own acts of resistance, printing and distributing subversive leaflets, but their semi-creative actions lead to dark consequences when the Germans arrest, interrogate, and imprison them for months. It's the war experiences of Claude and Marcel and their circle that strike the most memorable, penetrating note in this loosely spun account of bohemian choices. Thomson approaches the women's story with poetic empathy, yet the result can seem scant and oddly paced, swooping in for consequential moments, then jumping ahead without connection. The effect is both beguiling and detached.A real-life modernist relationship is revived with commitment if not quite enough conviction.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 15, 2018
Thomson's (Katherine Carlyle, 2015) latest is based on the real-life relationship between illustrator, designer, and photographer Suzanne Malherbe and the half-Jewish writer and photographer Lucie Schwob, who changed their names to Marcel Moore and Claude Cahun, respectively. They met before the start of the Great War in a small French town. Privately they become lovers, but to the outside world they are sisters. They move to Paris, where they befriend some of the biggest names of the era, including Apollinaire, Andr� Breton, and Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, proprietors of the famous bookshop Shakespeare and Company. But Thomson has more on his mind than mere name-dropping as the novel turns darker and takes place over many decades. The women move to the island of Jersey, the Nazis assume power in Europe and soon occupy their adopted home, and they are imprisoned for anti-Nazi propaganda. Readers enamored of Paris in its artistic and literary heyday and curious about overlooked historical women and members of the LGBT community will be moved by Thomson's lovely, quietly powerful novel of reinvention in many forms.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)