A deep-dive of a novel about the WWII experiences of one man and the people he loves. Andras Levi, a young and ambitious man from a Hungarian village, receives a scholarship to study architecture in Paris in 1937. He is nostalgic for Hungary and his family but enthralled by his new home and his studies. He soon meets Clara, a beautiful Hungarian ballet instructor, Jewish like Andras, and with a very mysterious past. As Europe heads toward war, it becomes nearly impossible to remain in France as a foreigner.
The above sounds like a conventional narrative, but Orringer's novel, with its scrupulous and wide-ranging historical and cultural detail, patient unfolding of plot, and commitment to telling her story without cutting corners, feels unusual to the reader. While I enjoy novels with shifting points of view and time periods, it's refreshing to read a contemporary work that tells a deep, multi-faceted story from the perspective of one person moving forward through time. Moreover, 'telling it straight' in this way embeds the reader in Andras' specific situation, on the choices he is forced to make, and on all the ways his choices are taken away. Also appreciated is the focus on wartime Hungary and Hungarian Jews, whose stories have been told less frequently. An important work, and dramatic while never straying into melodrama.
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