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Summary: German Occupation - Vivid Portrait of Paris, 1940
Review: In the carefully researched novels by Alan Furst we encounter men and women facing extraordinary situations, individuals overwhelmed by historical events. The World at Night makes good reading and offers an intriguing look at France during the first year of occupation.Jean Claude Casson, a producer of moderately successful movies, is awakened by news that German forces are attacking. Within days he is conscripted into military service and engaged in filming a documentary on the front line. The French forces crumble and Casson becomes part of the chaotic retreat. This rapid collapse of France is followed by German occupation. Furst paints a vivid picture of winter 1940-41 in Paris, a remarkably cold winter, made worse by severe food and fuel shortages. Casson survives, but faces the moral dilemma inherent to all living under military occupation. What activities are just and what activities constitute collaboration with the enemy? Casson reluctantly agrees to carry money into Spain for the Resistance. We travel with him, unprepared for contingencies, essentially naive. With each step Casson is closer to disaster. He survives again, but only to become entangled with German counter espionage efforts. Jean Claude Casson was not completely satisfactory as a protagonist. He wanders erratically from one woman to another, a behavior shared by key characters in other stories by Alan Furst. His rather sudden deepening love for Citrine was a critical turning point in the plot, but was not entirely convincing. I consequently found the ending abrupt and somewhat implausible. Despite this reservation, I highly recommend The World at Night. Alan Furst has created a fascinating portrait of wartime France, not the typical picture of resistance fighters destroying bridges, but a more authentic examination of life under occupation. The World at Night is good history as well as entertaining reading.
Rating:
Summary: Another gem from Furst
Review: Once again, Alan Furst has brilliantly taken us back into the 1930s and 1940s, this time to Paris in the immediate aftermath of the Nazi Germany invasion. The protagonist, a film producer who initially thinks life can continue as normal, takes us step by step through the transition from sadness to resentment to anger to resistance against a brutal occupying force.
Furst's real achievement in this novel is taking the mundane and the normal and weaving them into the difficult and violent world of war and occupation. Everyday experiences like eating, drinking, earning a living, loving and talking are the primary daily behaviors around which the characters interact, but they are all intruded upon by the occupation. This is what makes the book so "real."
Furst combines history, fiction, and the mysteries of espionage as well as anyone since Eric Ambler. He is always worth reading.
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