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A review by heelturn2
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose
Did not finish book. Stopped at 46%.
echhhh. this book was making me cranky so I stopped reading itZ very slow. all of the narrators speak and write almost exactly alike. there are like 4 or 5 of them. none are particularly likeable.
setting is unfortunately flat as well. interwar europe was like such a fascinating lively time and place but this falls flat - most of the characters are artists (or friends/muses/patrons of artists) living and working in paris c. 1920, but you don’t really get an evocative sense of the city and the scene and the philosophy and the politics that should be surrounding them… the characters are strangely uninfluenced by the world around them, except for the central non-narrator character, who seems to have little agency as she’s unwittingly moulded into a nazi collaborator. instead you get these sniffy little references that are immediately explained because the author doesn’t trust her reader to know what she’s talking about. there’s a bit where a character, writing in a private diary entry, references “madchen in uniform” when describing the appearance of someone… and then immediately explains that it’s “a lesbian movie very popular right now” …!!!! why would she explain this to her own diary? why should the author explain an iconic film to her readers??? the whole book is written like this. I found this eventually made it sort of unreadable.
this book is too mired in liberalism to really reckon with the question at its core - why are people drawn into fascism? the central character, Lou Villars (based on real life evil gnc lesbian athlete Violette Morris) doesn’t do much deliberately to become a fascist. she’s framed as a victim of circumstance. her upbringing and the few opportunities she has to do what she loves and follow her passions just *happen* to land her in the path of nationalists, antisemites, and xenophobes who profoundly influence her worldview. this seems very at odds with the portrayal of Lou as a person with a strong innate personality that goes against social expectations. does she have autonomy or not, yknow??? maybe the book gets into this later but it really didn’t feel like the author was equipped to deal with the fact that someone might *choose* fascism (rather than simply be led astray), let alone *why* they would do that.
also. I don’t want to get into it but generally the way queer people are handled in this book feels so weird. like at best I’ll chalk it up to a straight ally author simply not understanding the vibes. at worst it’s like quirky homophobia. I don’t care to explain! iykyk
anyways go read about Violette Morris instead if you need a morally corrupt lesbian fix. the real person is far more interesting than the character in this book (Morris was older at the time of WWII - she had already driven ambulances in WWI and then had an amateur sports career before aiding the Vichy regime) and can probably offer you more insight into how fascism takes hold of those you wouldn’t expect it to.
setting is unfortunately flat as well. interwar europe was like such a fascinating lively time and place but this falls flat - most of the characters are artists (or friends/muses/patrons of artists) living and working in paris c. 1920, but you don’t really get an evocative sense of the city and the scene and the philosophy and the politics that should be surrounding them… the characters are strangely uninfluenced by the world around them, except for the central non-narrator character, who seems to have little agency as she’s unwittingly moulded into a nazi collaborator. instead you get these sniffy little references that are immediately explained because the author doesn’t trust her reader to know what she’s talking about. there’s a bit where a character, writing in a private diary entry, references “madchen in uniform” when describing the appearance of someone… and then immediately explains that it’s “a lesbian movie very popular right now” …!!!! why would she explain this to her own diary? why should the author explain an iconic film to her readers??? the whole book is written like this. I found this eventually made it sort of unreadable.
this book is too mired in liberalism to really reckon with the question at its core - why are people drawn into fascism? the central character, Lou Villars (based on real life evil gnc lesbian athlete Violette Morris) doesn’t do much deliberately to become a fascist. she’s framed as a victim of circumstance. her upbringing and the few opportunities she has to do what she loves and follow her passions just *happen* to land her in the path of nationalists, antisemites, and xenophobes who profoundly influence her worldview. this seems very at odds with the portrayal of Lou as a person with a strong innate personality that goes against social expectations. does she have autonomy or not, yknow??? maybe the book gets into this later but it really didn’t feel like the author was equipped to deal with the fact that someone might *choose* fascism (rather than simply be led astray), let alone *why* they would do that.
also. I don’t want to get into it but generally the way queer people are handled in this book feels so weird. like at best I’ll chalk it up to a straight ally author simply not understanding the vibes. at worst it’s like quirky homophobia. I don’t care to explain! iykyk
anyways go read about Violette Morris instead if you need a morally corrupt lesbian fix. the real person is far more interesting than the character in this book (Morris was older at the time of WWII - she had already driven ambulances in WWI and then had an amateur sports career before aiding the Vichy regime) and can probably offer you more insight into how fascism takes hold of those you wouldn’t expect it to.