P.S. I had a dream last night that we were in Paris for Christmas. You, me, Will, Alice. The snow fell in thick fat flakes as we strolled along the Champs-Élysées, the lights of the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the distance. It was the most perfect dream, Thomas. I know we will get there one day. I promise we will.
Last Christmas in Paris was a book club pick for me, and while it's not the sort of thing I'd typically pick up, I am always game to read something outside of my comfort zone. Unfortunately, I simply didn't think that this “Novel of World War I” – a romance told in letters – was very good at all. With florid and maudlin writing, the storyline reveals nothing new about the Great War or the lives of the people affected by it, and honestly, I found the whole endeavor pointless; I have no idea why this book was written (or why it took two authors, Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb, to complete). Not for me, but judging by its high rating on Goodreads, admittedly of value to others.
I don't have much to say about this one, but I do want to voice (once again) my complaint that I find novels set in the big wars to be a lazy and easy appeal to sentimentality; the author needn't work too hard at setting the physical and emotional scene when we all have mental pictures and readily accessible reactions from watching news reels and films; and where the work is half-done like that, I expect an author to have something new or important to say by using those settings. I wasn't a huge fan of The Nightingale or All the Light We Cannot See, but at least their authors were attempting to tell stories about little-known groups or situations within WWII. With Last Christmas in Paris, we follow the correspondence of some upper-crust Brits as their attitude turns from “What jolly good fun is training camp! I do hope we see some decent action with the Hun, but they say this will all be over before Christmas!” to “Real war is terrifying and there's nothing more pitiable than watching a soldier crying out for his mother as he dies in the mud.” What's new in that? As the years go by, we are told about mustard gas and the sinking of the Lusitania and the Spanish Flu, and what's new about that? And as for the romantic angle – and its constant complications – I couldn't connect with that relationship either. Simply not my cuppa vin chaud.
