PARIS IN RUINS

In Tod’s historical novel, two young couples find love against the backdrop of the 1870 Siege of Paris and the short-lived Commune that followed.

Camille Noisette and Mariele de Crécy both belong to very comfortable upper-class families. Mariele is engaged to Camille’s brother Bertrand, and Camille will soon meet André Laborde, and love will follow. But all four must endure the Prussians’ siege of Paris, which will cause physical destruction, lost lives, and, most important, social upheaval, as the lower classes, reduced to starving or eating rats, become a powder keg that explodes in the Communard uprising. Mariele and her mother try too late to slip away from Paris, are captured by the Prussians, and barely make it back. Camille becomes a sort of spy against the Communard movement, leading a dangerous double life, and, when things heat up, she volunteers at a makeshift hospital while Mariele helps out at a makeshift day care. Tod is a very experienced historical novelist, and it shows: There are no missteps here. Historical novels by their nature provide history and history lessons. Napoleon III does not get off lightly for his adventurism, and the reader will most likely be in sympathy with the Communard cause: The upper classes—the older generation in particular—are portrayed as clueless and arrogant. Bertrand and André survive their military experience, and the couples’ futures seem secure. Tod is not only a good historian, but also an accomplished writer, capturing here the febrile atmosphere of a Paris about to be under siege, the vise tightening, the sense of security eroding: “The city felt different. Darker than usual and for the most part quieter, and yet at times a sense of forced gaiety that became almost manic bubbled up.” It is against this looming dread that Camille and Mariele will struggle and even grow as human beings.

A gripping, well-limned picture of a time and a place that provide universal lessons.