The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

Amy  

historical fiction

Odile is a young woman in 1939 Paris where she is a proud librarian at the American Library under the direction of real-life Dorothy Reeder. Odile becomes part of the resistance fighting against the Nazi’s destruction of information and delivering materials to Jews and other people who have been banned from utilizing the library. In 1983, she is living alone in Montana and is the neighbor of a middle-schooler named Lily. The Paris Library focuses on Odile’s life, mainly told through two viewpoints, Odile’s in WWII Paris and Lily’s in 1980s America. There are some additional viewpoints peppered throughout the novel to contribute to the full picture.

This story had a slow beginning for me. Around the 1/3 mark, it finally got interesting. I wanted to find out what happened to Odile when the war arrived and how she ended up in the United States. As Janet Skeslien Charles eloquently stated during a post-novel interview on the audiobook, this novel showed how relationships and words can change people’s lives. It highlighted the American Library and how its employees and subscribers survived the Nazi occupation in Paris.  Several of the characters in this novel were endearing and the tale was intriguing once it kicked in.

The narrator voicing Lily, Nicky Diss, was either not a native American speaker or had spent a lot of time in England based on her pronunciations of “everything” (EV-ri-thing), “anything” (EH-ni-thing) and “cemetery” (SE-me-tree). Other than these slips with her accent, she was a good voice actor. I give her an A-.

Odile’s narrator, Sarah Feathers, spoke with a British accent unless she was specifically voicing someone French. This was irritating since Odile is French. Plus, she had a bit of audible saliva which I never enjoy. Her voice acting was good except during longer dialogues where she delivered many of the lines relatively un-animatedly and it was difficult to keep track of who was speaking. I give her a B-.

There was a third narrator, Esther Wane, handling all the other additional viewpoints and she did a fine job but I didn’t hear enough of her to really make a fair assessment of her work.

I will say that there were a few times voices were on the telephone and I loved the way the audiobook producer made their voices sound like they were coming from a tin can. Bravo to the producers!