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Priscilla: The Hidden Life Of An Englishwoman In Wartime France (2014)

by Nicholas Shakespeare(Favorite Author)

3.38 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0062297031 (ISBN13: 9780062297037)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Harper

review 1: It isn't very often that I don't finish a book but this was one. I couldn't even get halfway through the book. The characters were just strange, I felt nothing for any of them, well, maybe distaste. When I don't warm up to even one character in a book it makes it difficult to continue. Perhaps it was the author's way of telling the story, I can't really put my finger on it. But there was definitely a story to be told, it just wasn't being told well. So I gave up.
review 2: Nicholas Shakespeare, known for several novels, set out to learn more about his aunt, a woman with a shadowy past in Paris during the war. Priscilla chose not to talk about her war experiences when she returned to England. She settled into country life in England but descended into alcoh... moreolism and sadness, leading to an early death. What Shakespeare found and has written is an insightful biography that is a study of accommodation, choices, hardship and survival in dangerous circumstances. In the beginning he had little to go on, a few stories, some names, a few people still living who were also caught in Nazi-occupied Paris, Priscilla's sister. Like a good sleuth he followed those early tracks which led to others, to papers in the Bodleian Library and to Priscilla's own diary, in the possession of the step-daughter who had hidden the writings from Priscilla's husband. This book does not set out to be a complete study of living life under occupation but it does describe one woman's choices and those of her social circle. It does not make for pretty reading. The definition of "hero" is not black and white. The book is thought-provoking, annoying sometimes in its incompleteness, but Shakespeare is writing about one person, with all her flaws, not an historical study. less

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