Days of Love and Danger

by 

Lauren Roberts

Stunning and disturbing in equal  measure, April in Paris (Nan A. Talese Doubleday; $21.95) by Michael Wallner, is the first English translation of a novel that captures and holds its readers much as the German army held Paris in 1943, the year in which the story begins. 

Roth, a young soldier who has been working in the Army’s back offices in occupied Paris, is suddenly transferred to Gestapo headquarters when his ability to speak accent-free French is discovered. It is an ability that will give him a front-row seat in interrogations of French Resistance fighters.

Though he dislikes his new role and finds the tortures disturbing, Roth does little to question them or his responsibility in them. Rather, he does his work and afterward lies in his room, dreaming of becoming one with the city instead of  dominating it as an invader. One evening, despondent, he decides to join the Parisians. Because his room is in a hotel that has been taken over by the military for its exclusive use he cannot leave in civilian clothes without arousing suspicion, so he stuffs his checked suit and a book into a laundry bag before heading out. Finding a destroyed, abandoned building, he changes his image with his clothes, becoming Monsieur Antoine, part of the evening crowd walking, chatting and dining in a Paris not entirely itself yet holding onto its spirit.

It is during one of these outings that he sees a young woman he had seen on earlier, uniform-clad explorations of a part of the city, sitting in front of a bookshop he later learns is owned by her father. This time, however, she is working in a barber shop though she pays him little heed. Entranced, he repeatedly looks for Chantal on his outings, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not.

Roth walks a very dangerous line however. His superior, Captain Leibold, is determined to break the resistance, and he isn’t hesitant to use all the SS resources he has to accomplish that. He also has an eye for Roth. So does Leibold’s assistant, Anna Rieleck-Sostmann, who seduces Roth while tormenting him with her knowledge of his civilian pleasures.

Despite his anxiety over Anna’s knowledge and how she might use it, Roth continues his excursions. One evening, Chantal approaches him. His time with her brings him happiness for it seems as if he has found his love, but it also brings him closer to the treachery that is occupied Paris.

When Leibold informs him that a prisoner released to lead them to others in the Resistance movement has taken them directly to the barber shop and its occupants and that they are scheduled to be arrested he realizes for the first time that she, her father and the barber are part of the French Resistance—and that she poses a genuine danger to him. Still, he loves her and whether to try and warn them is a choice he doesn’t want to make but ultimately does. In the ensuing raid he manages to save Chantal, but in doing so he unwittingly sets a trap for himself when a Resistance bomb later explodes in a nightclub, killing several high-ranking German officers.

When his injuries turn out to be minor, suspicion centers on him as a possible traitor and collaborator. The tortures he routinely witnessed now become his own, but they also allow him, for the first time, to perceive himself in a new way, as someone with purpose:

“My situation, my shattered nerves, meant only one thing: I was a miserable failure. I’d wanted to be someone else, to go for a walk between the lines—as a Frenchman, as a German, whichever I pleased. Leading Leibold by the nose, fooling the French,; it had seemed so simple. What become clearest of all to me in those hours on my plank bed was this: I had believed there was no need for me to take up a position. I had just wanted to strip off the German and slip inside the Frenchman whenever I felt like it.

“Never in my romantic euphoria had I wondered about Chantal’s motives or taken into consideration the reasons that counted for her. Now I saw that she had acted tactically from the first moment on . . .  Chantal had always been engaged in the struggle, while I, tangled up in the idyll of my imaginings, was merely fleeing reality . . . There had been nothing heroic about my transformation into Monsieur Antoine . . . I was a coward who didn’t dare make his opposition public.”

It is that self-awareness that helps to not only save him from his preordained fate, but from himself as a person and even from his role in the story. Though the book is compelling from the first, it picks up a life fuse at this point, a loosening of the self-imposed oblivion in which he had operated for two years. Roth becomes more real to himself and to us. His struggles to survive and adapt while searching for Chantal reflect the newfound spirit that drives him to continue even as the unmistakable signs of an Allied invasion draw close.

April in Paris is an excellent book by a first-time novelist. Though the tortures are not described in detail, they possess an arresting sense of horror that infuses the entire story. Even the speed at which it moves does not detract from its depth. I can’t say it’s a wonderful book—it’s too disturbing for that lively a word—but it is vivid and remarkable, a fine read when one is seeking substantiality.

* * * 

Note: Next weekend, April 28-29, is the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Now celebrating its twelfth year, this event, the largest book festival in the nation, takes place on the gorgeous UCLA campus where grass and trees provide a luscious backdrop to hundreds of vendors and authors, six outdoor stages, almost 100 panels and 130,000 visitors. The work that goes into this is enormous, and it shows in an incredible  literary weekend.

The weekend begins Friday evening with the 27th Annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, and continues on Saturday and Sunday. For those with children, there is a special area with all day entertainment on two stages and numerous vendors specializing in children’s literary interests. Where there are readers there are writers and for those panels with agents, publishers and authors covering all aspects of the industry abound. Poets and lovers of poetry have an outdoor stage where works are read and several panels with well-known poets are among the offerings. For culinary devotees, one outdoor stage is dedicated to various chef-authors who cook up a storm, chat and sign books. Political and public affairs followers will find plenty to interest them with panels focusing on national and international issues. (Tickets are required for the indoor events, but some will be available at the entrance; non-ticket holders can also use a stand-by line for individual events that don’t fill up.) For the reader and booklover in all of us, there is simply everything. And with the sole exception of a small charge for parking it is all free.

If you reside in the southern California area, definitely make a point of attending this festival. The combination of sun, grass and trees, the air throbbing with excitement, and the crowds cooing over books and swarming tables and authors is thrilling. For those who are too far away to attend, Book TV will be showing panels related to politics and public affairs. You can view the showings either on television or online by checking their schedule later this week.


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines have reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, 800 bookmarks and nearly 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it