The arrival of the holiday season and some much-welcomed time off brought me some extra time to read, a welcome way to close my year. I picked up Last Christmas in Paris, a novel written by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb, because it looked like just my sort of satisfying read. I was right about that.
This book is set during WWI and, as 2018 closed it seemed fitting to spend some time thinking again about this war. This year is the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended WWI and in so many ways the 20th and 21st centuries were defined by this horrible war. The historian in me is endlessly fascinated by the conflict. The reader in me likes a good story and this one, recommended by the reviewers at Bas Bleu, was a great read.
The story is told from the English point of view in a series of letters exchanged between a young woman, Evie, who is just an adult as as the war breaks out. She writes to her brother and other friends who are deployed in France and the exchanges are the backbone of the novel. As each year of the war closes, the reader is treated to an observation from 1968, as an ailing Tom, a frequent recipient of Evie’s letters and now at the end of a long life, reviews the years of the long-ago war. He's in Paris, where he has come to spent his last Christmas.
The novel is written in letter format (think Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) and, like that novel, has reflections on both the horror of war as well as the more mundane aspects of life lived while at war. Evie exchanges letters with a handful of people and, like many young women of that era, realizes that she wants more from life than the narrow social confines of her privileged upbringing. For one thing, that privilege doesn’t protect her from the losses of the war and, for another, she craves the ability to help out. She eventually comes to write a column about the war on the homefront and though the reader never experiences Evie’s life after the war, we do come to understand that the war will open up enduring opportunities for her.
Much of the novel’s letters traffic in the hope that WWI will be the war to end all wars, an idea that the characters both embrace and believe. Given the history that would follow, the notion is especially bittersweet and gives the reader much to consider. The novel is well-written, with a strong sense of the historical time and engaging in those details. I enjoyed it even more than I expected and it has earned a spot on my bookshelf.
