*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity. This review is being posted as part of the The Last Train From Paris blog tour hosted by Rachel's Random Resources.
Title: The Last Train From Paris
Author: Juliet Greenwood
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: ★★★★★
For Iris, each visit to her mother in St Mabon’s Cove,
Cornwall has been the same – a serene escape from the city. But today, as she breathes
in the salt air on the doorstep of her beloved childhood home, a heavy weight
of anticipation settles over her. Iris knows she’s adopted, but any questions
about where she came from have always been shut down by her parents, who can’t
bear to revisit the past.
Now, Iris can’t stop thinking about what she’s read on the
official paperwork: BABY GIRL, FRANCE, 1939 – the year war was declared with
Nazi Germany.
When Iris confronts her mother, she hits the same wall of pain and
resistance as whenever she mentions the war. That is, until her mother
tearfully hands her an old tin of letters, tucked neatly beside a delicate
piece of ivory wool.
Retreating to the loft, Iris steels herself to at last learn the
truth, however painful it might be. But, as she peels back each layer of
history before her, a sensation of dread grows inside her. The past is calling,
and its secrets are more intricate and tangled than Iris could ever have
imagined.
The year is 1939, and in Paris, France a young woman is about to commit a terrible betrayal…
The Last Train From Paris is the latest compelling novel from
historical fiction author Juliet Greenwood. This was my first time reading any
of her work but her engaging writing style had me hooked from the very first
chapter and I’m now excited to sink my teeth into the rest of her books. It’s
been a while since a historical fiction book has truly made me cry but this
gut-wrenching story had me sobbing throughout.
Our story is told through a dual-timeline third-person multiple
POV narrative, alternating between Iris’ perspective in 1964 and Nora and
Sabine’s perspectives between 1938 and 1945. The two timelines work beautifully
together in progressing the story, with tension created through us learning
things in Iris’ chapters which have not played out yet in our wartime chapters.
All of the wonderful settings (including pre-war Paris, wartime Cornwall, 1960s
Cornwall, war-torn France and London at the height of the Blitz) truly came
alive on the page and the perfectly-paced narrative explores thought-provoking
themes such as sacrifice, mother-daughter relationships, love, adoption, friendship,
separation and revenge.
All of the characters in The Last Train From Paris were
beautifully complex and our protagonists were all wonderful strong female characters
who demonstrated such tenacity and strength throughout the story. The story was
a beautiful ode to the love of both biological and adoptive mothers, with
Sabine forced to make a heartbreaking decision in the best interests of her
daughter and Nora taking on another women’s child and loving her as her own. The
primary antagonist in the story Karl Bernheim was also fantastically written and
a truly vile piece of work who made my blood boil whenever he appeared. Whilst
being mindful of avoiding spoilers, I thought the portrayal of Sabine’s husband
Emil and his gradual development into the character he becomes by the end of
the story was also really well written.
The section focusing on Nora fleeing France when Europe found
itself on the brink of war and catching the last train from Paris (hence the
book’s title) and last ferry to Dover was incredibly powerful and had me on the
edge of my seat. Juliet Greenwood explains in her author afterword that this was
based on the real experiences of her Mum who, like our character Nora, had been
studying in Paris when war broke out and was forced to hurry back to England
before the borders closed. The chapters exploring Sabine’s story as her family
were forced to flee their home on the outskirts of Paris and join the millions
of refugees travelling south with nothing more than they could carry were also
incredibly powerful and based on the true experiences of the friends and
relatives of Juliet Greenwood’s mother. Using genuine accounts as inspiration
in this way really made the story feel so authentic and helped the narrative to
perfectly capture the emotions the characters would have been feeling. The
story was clearly meticulously researched to support the genuine accounts used as
history just seeped through the pages.
I found the exploration of 1930s attitudes to disability to
be a really interesting aspect of the story. The despicable Nazi eugenics
policies which saw the murder of thousands of mentally and physically
disabled children are infamous and this is explored through Sabine’s daughter
Violette who is born with a cleft lip. Sabine has to make heartbreaking decisions
to protect her daughter from the Nazi regime and this sets up our story. We also
get an exploration, albeit a brief one, of attitudes to disabled children in the
UK through Nora’s nephew and this was also really interesting.
I would have liked each chapter heading to have detailed the
month as well as the year and location so we could track the build up to the
outbreak of war and then the progression of the war but this is a minor detail
for the history-geek in me and the only criticism I could find in an otherwise
excellent story.
Overall, The Last Train From Paris is a really powerful and
compelling piece of historical fiction and has been one of my
standout historical fiction books of 2023. It is a story which
is equally as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking and it’s truly going to stay
with me for a long time.
