Paris Never Leaves You

April 20, 2020
The question of what it means to be Jewish drives Feldman’s nuanced WWII story of love and survival (after Terrible Virtue). Nine years after the war, Charlotte Foret, a widow from France, lives in New York City with her teenage daughter, Vivi, working as an editor at a publishing house. Vivi learns to navigate the social whirl of her school as one of only a handful of Jewish students, while Charlotte tries to deny a growing attraction to her married boss. When Charlotte receives, and tries to ignore, a letter postmarked Bogotá, Colombia, a sanctuary for many former Nazis, she realizes she cannot escape the memories of occupied Paris. In flashbacks, Feldman vividly recreates those years as Charlotte runs a Paris bookstore where she meets and befriends German Wehrmacht officer Julian Bauer. She rationalizes that Julian (the subject of the letters she receives from Bogotá) is different from other Nazis; though he assumes she’s Jewish and getting by on false identity papers, he’s unconcerned. The night Julian saves Charlotte and Vivi from a roundup, he and Charlotte become lovers and he confides a dangerous secret that gives Feldman’s story a gasp-worthy spin, elevating an otherwise conventional wartime love story. With its appealing heroine and historically detailed settings, romance fans will find this satisfying. Agent: Emma Sweeney, Emma Sweeney Agency.