Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Paris, 1940. Shops are being boarded up, Jewish children are loaded onto buses and eighteen-year-old Elise’s heart beats hard as she runs down the cobbled streets under the shadow of swastikas. She hates her father with all her heart: he is working with the Nazis and has forbidden her to be friends with Myriam and Salomé, the Goldman sisters who are closer to her than her own family.
Elise will do anything to help the girls she loves as sisters, including sharing her father’s secret business. Every day she creeps out to their apartment, avoiding the cold-eyed soldiers who stalk the streets. But in trying to save them, will she bring terrible danger to their door?
Years later, newly pregnant Jeanne stares at the photograph of three young girls on the beach. She recognises her mother Elise in the centre of the picture, but who does her mother have her arms around?
Jeanne feels such love for the tiny new life inside her and feels desperate to connect with the mother who has always shut her out. Could finding these lost sisters, laughing and vibrant in the crumpled black and white photo, help Jeanne understand her mother and lay the ghosts of the past to rest?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of Once We Were Sisters to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
It’s been awhile since I have read anything by Ann Bennett but when I do go back to her books I am reminded what a great writer of historical fiction she is. This latest book, Once We Were Sisters, was one I read in two sittings. The chapters seemed to slip by quickly and I think this was because of the good pacing throughout plus the fact there was a clear beginning, middle and end without any filler in between. The story was expertly plotted with difficult and emotional subject matter tackled throughout. This was a story of survival in the most desperate of times. A tale of bravery, devotion, loyalty and courage battling against the odds. A brief prologue set in December 1942 introduces us to sisters Myriam and Salome who are being led through a forest in the hopes they can reach the Swiss boarder with France and secure safety. Just as they are about to reach that point disaster strikes.
The reader is then brought forward to Corsica March 1942. Jeanne is travelling to her mothers farmstead in the hills to tell her the news that she will be a grandmother. Jeanne for the most part has a good relationship with her mother Elise but there have always been an air of mystery surrounding specific details of her mothers past during the war. Elise reared Jeanne on her own and refuses to talk about the circumstances of her fathers death. Jeanne now that she herself is about to become a mother wants answers. She feels she can’t move forward in the present without knowing what her mother has been hiding. A dream/nightmare she regularly has lingers on within her long after she wakes up. Memories of an event that she is sure are tied to Elise’s past are trying to make themselves known. Secretly taking a photograph and reading through some documents that Elise has stashed away, Jeanne decides to visit France, the country of her mothers birth. If Elise insists on remaining evasive than Jeanne will just have to go digging for answers herself.
I presumed from this point on that the chapters would weave back and forth between Jeanne and Elise at a regular rate. That’s what usually occurs in a dual timeline novel but that wasn’t the case, and I was glad of it. Chapters from Jeanne’s perspective appear few and far between at just the right junctures to briefly summarise something or for her to connect the pieces of the puzzle that were making themselves known. I didn’t want her randomly meeting some man on her journey and falling in love and forgetting about her boyfriend. It would have felt too contrived. Instead, Jeanne is the link that binds past and present together but in a subtle and beautiful way and Elise, Myriam and Salome’s stories are allowed to shine and what an incredible story unfolds.
Life was good for the Goldman family of Louis, Esther, Myriam and Salome pre war. They were Jewish but did not practice and had wealth and could enjoy a lavish lifestyle. They were friends with Victor, Catherine and Elise Baudin as the men shared business interests. Summers spent in the South of France meant the three young girls, with Elise being the eldest, formed a strong bond beyond that ventured into sisterhood. A beautiful picture of friendship, togetherness, fun and familiarity emerged but all that was shattered as the Germans marched on Paris in September 1940. Their lives were never the same again. Elise had barely left her teens but she was forced to grow up quickly. As well as the conflict raging all around her there is an internal battle which she must wager as laws are enforced upon the Jewish population of Paris which sees the ties she has with the Goldmans severed. But will she allow these new rules and regulations to break her steadfast friendship with Myriam?
I said Myriam faced a conflict and that is due to her father's viewpoints. It was like Victor did a complete 360 as soon as the war broke out. He felt his bread was better off buttered on the other side and Catherine fell right into place alongside him as she favoured the lavish lifestyle she was accustomed to. Securing a place as a minister in the new Vichy government in the Free Zone gave Victor the status and power he had always wanted. To hear his antisemitic views spill forth appal Elise and to think that he can cast away the Goldmans with a drop of a hat is deplorable. Elise loves her father and that won’t change but she can’t stand by as her friends life goes from bad to worse with harsh laws, rationing, curfews and confinements. Here is where Elise threaded a very fine line. She had to be seen to be loyal to her parents but truly she was going against their horrific and unjust reviews and following her heart and mind no matter what danger it put her in. I found Elise to be astute, forthright and rebellious. All of which are very good characteristics to have in her situation. She could have turned a blind eye to the developments that ensued for the Goldman’s and so many others but that wasn’t in her nature.
Fear, tension, degradation, apprehension and anxiety all become commonplace as the days and months pass in Paris. The Goldman’s are devastated when round ups start to occur. Victor is taken and this is where I felt Elise really came into her own. Despite being so young she pushed herself forward into the lions den and did so with graciousness and fearlessness. Working in a local flower shop which had much going on behind the scenes afforded her to do certain things and I loved that she engaged in resistance work through looking through her fathers documents. She was aware of things before they happened and this information could help save people from persecution. Casting her own fears aside she kept doing this but would it ultimately lead her to danger not to mention the fate of the Goldman’s literally more or less falls into her hands.
There is so much more that happens from the point at which the Germans take over the City of Light but each event is worthy of its place within the book. Cliched as it sounds you really are taken on a rollercoaster of a ride and it was one which I didn’t want to end as the story become compelling with edge of your seat stuff ensuing. Nothing felt as if it was there just for the sake of it or to fill up a chapter or two. Instead the author really got inside the characters heads and the reader could envision themselves there alongside them as they navigated one cruel event after the other. It was as if they could not catch a break and I suppose given the persecution of Jews inflicted by Hitler there never was a chance to just relax and breathe during the war for you lived on your nerves never knowing would today be the day the Germans found you and took you away. When things reach extreme crisis point Elise once again showed she was made of strong stuff and she pushed aside thoughts of any consequences and just went for it which only served to show how brave and courageous she was. When the plot moved to a different part of France, I found the historical element of this interesting and informative as it was another piece of the war puzzle which I had had scant information about. It served to highlight how many people from all walks of life did their bit to fight the injustice, danger and violence that lurked around every corner.
There were chapters from Myriam's viewpoint which contrasted well with Elise’s chapters. Although honestly it was Elise and her incredible daring, grit and heroism that truly captured my attention. Myriam’s view served to show what it was like from the other side to be on the receiving end of so much hatred and to have your life turned upside down and shattered all because of your religion. The friendship between Elise and Myriam was cemented but as the prologue suggested that friendship would be tested. But would kindness, compassion, humanity, understanding and decency win out or will the worst befall the friends? Will Jeanne find the answers to the questions she has? Well, an afternoon spent in their company will answer those questions and so much more. You will be glad you made the effort to read this engaging heart wrenching story which tells us war is painful, but the past must never be forgotten.
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