And even as the quote above talks about keeping hope alive, I didn’t feel like the author really got to the heart of books and words as hope or even as a weapon. A few people get sent to internment camps, but they return home at the end of the war. What this means in the book is that Jews were no longer allowed in the library or access to their books, and so the librarians secretly delivered books to them.īut no one ever really gets caught. Maybe they were hiding Jews in the library.īut ‘joining the Resistance’ is a bit of an exaggerated phrase. Maybe they were passing messages with the books. The book summary includes this teaser: “Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books.” Pretty much just day-to-day activities with some drama. There were several bookish things that I really liked, but overall this book was a bit boring for me. (Also Odile memorized the Dewey Decimal System and frequently processes life through this categorization which is actually a pretty cool thing to include in the book.)

If you are a book-lover, especially of classic literature, this book will probably hold a special place in your heart because you understand the importance of books for the mind and the soul and all the quotes from the books will be familiar. It follows the life of Odile Souchet in Paris as a young librarian at The American Library, and then as an older woman living in rural Montana, befriending the teenager girl next door, Lily.Īlmost all the characters (not Odile or Lily) are based on real life people working at this library in Paris during the Nazi occupation in WWII.

This is your classic historical fiction that jumps back and forth from past (1940s) and the present (1980s). Unfortunately, the book didn’t live up to my expectations for this one. “Words are worth fighting for, they are worth the risk.” Books the fresh air breathed in to keep the heart beating, to keep the brain imagining, to keep hope alive.”

Book review the paris library