Book Reviews

Book Blurb

In the late summer of 1936, Anders is a budding young photographer from Vienna who travels to pre-war Paris. His mother sends him ostensibly to attend art school… and to survive as a Jew. But Anders is ready to explore his other secret: his sexuality. Anders soon falls for Jean, and captures Jean’s beauty with his camera, selling the photos by the Seine. A wealthy American socialite, David, sees the work and presents Anders with a scandalous new venture.

With David’s movie camera, they set up a secret film studio, capturing incriminating reels of the rich and powerful committing all manner of compromising acts. As Paris falls to Hitler and the occupation takes hold, senior Nazis commandeer David’s mansion as their personal brothel. Anders and David begin secretly filming the Nazis’ trysts, scattering the evidence across Paris. Anders’s old flame, Eilas, returns as an SS officer. Jean hatches a plot with the Resistance to assassinate Eilas’s superior, the head of the SS in Paris, where blackmail and betrayal, love and survival are all part of the answer to the question, Why in Paris?

Book Review

I want to be perfectly honest, which is what readers of my reviews would only expect: I started reading this novel very reluctantly, despite having read loads of other books by the same author without even once having been let down. Harry F. Rey allowed me to discover his amazing writing skills in genres as different as space operas, steamy political thrillers with a wry twist, and heartfelt romances. And yet. I had several apprehensions about this particular book because I knew what a deathtrap the historical setting and subject were. To capture the essence of Paris before and during the Second World War, more importantly from the point of view of a Jewish main character, could lead to so many cringe-worthy errors: anachronisms, overt milking of sensationalist and fake-feeling emotionalism, loftiness in the face of such a dangerous, serious situation. Anything and everything could go wrong, and I clearly would have hated it to happen.

 

But sometimes one needs to trust one’s previous judgements (meaning, up to now I loved every single Harry F. Rey book I read) and wave one’s fears away. Because the author delivered a genuine masterpiece with this novel. He created a touching, engaging main character in the fictional person of Anders, a still closeted young gay man from Vienna who moves to Paris officially to study art, but in reality because he wants to explore his true self. As if magnetically drawn to the place, he ends up in a small flat above a gay bar in Montmartre, which was still the idealized epitome of Bohemian lifestyle in those years. Instead of excelling in drawing and painting, he starts probing the new art media that is photography, and turns out to be quite skilled. He namely encounters a breathtakingly handsome black hustler named Jean—his ideal of beauty and sexuality—with whom he falls deeply and despairingly in love—apparently unrequited love—while making him his main muse and model.

 

Soon, his artistic half-nudes, which he is selling pretty much under the table, gain Anders access to the refined artistic circle evolving around an American couple, David and Hella Roosevelt. David manages to convince Anders that he should take his photos of Jean to the next level, from seminude to nude, nay to pornographic; David has the means and connections to sell them for hefty sums to interested clients in the USA. While the money comes flowing in, Anders and Jean’s relationship becomes a mere business association, however, so Anders finally takes the plunge and starts exploring his sexuality with other men. And that’s when the war breaks out…

 

Everything in this book was cleverly done, skilfully, delicately, sensitively, subtly. No anachronism neither in setting nor development nor tone nor vocabulary; things fell into place with a logical fluidity that really impressed me. No cheap, fake-feeling emotions or plot developments, either. Whatever suspense there was, and indeed some parts left me reading with bated breath, occurred almost naturally, like preordained by what happened before and what the current historical situation demanded. Many scenes popped up as inevitably as in an ancient Greek tragedy. The main character Anders is not only trying to come to terms with his true self as a gay man and as a Jew in an increasingly hostile surrounding, but he is also on the lookout for love (a universal theme if there ever was one) and for the meaning of his life. He starts out quite clueless, with only vague notions of his inner urge to search for beauty and truth (which is what defines an artist), drifts around, lets himself be carried on and away, until he becomes much more active, takes decisions, and owns them. An amazing evolution to witness.

 

The story with his love interest, Jean, follows the same rules as the rest of the plot and subplots. It flows beautifully (if not always according to what my über-romantic heart was pining for), with not a single wrong note. The secondary characters included, to my utter surprise, such famous artists as Jean Cocteau and his lover Jean Marais, who aren’t added for folklore, but become if not central, then at least very important to the whole story (and let me just say, they fit in as seamlessly and perfectly as the rest of the cast). What impressed me most was the ease with which Harry F. Rey brought all these people together, made them join the storyline, had them discuss sometimes highly philosophical subjects with what really felt like genuine sentences that any of them could have said in that particular time and place, not only where content, but also where the form of the dialogs were concerned. The second thing that stood out was the author’s almost visceral understanding of that particular historical period in that particular geographical setting—whatever character I stumbled upon, be it only a fleetingly introduced extra, gave me the impression that I understood them. No one was entirely black or white, everybody just felt so human, even the fiercest Nazi monster (the author and I seem to share the conviction that the most horrid monster remains, in fact, human, which makes them and their deeds, thoughts, and reactions even more horrid). There was no wagged finger, no frowning with the moral superiority our posterity makes possible (and easy). In the scenes that made me gasp with fright or outrage, I always and immediately asked myself the question, “What else could anyone have done? What would I have done, anyway?” A question to which, often, there is no simple answer, if we are being honest.

 

This is currently, I guess, my favorite Harry F. Rey novel, his most literary, most mature work. I highly recommend it not only for lovers of historical fiction, but simply to all those who love a perfectly well-written, well-researched book that grabs the reader’s attention from the first to the last page, takes them on an unforgettable journey, and keeps lingering in their mind for a long time afterwards.

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by the author for the purpose of a review.

 

Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novel, 339 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	11-May-2022
Price	$4.99 ebook, $17.99 paperback, $27.99 hardcover
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Why-Paris-Harry-F-Rey-ebook/dp/B09YDBFBDY