The Velvet Hours

by Alyson Richman
April 22-May 16, 2018

The first two words that came to me while I was reading this: gratuitous and indulgent. For as much as I love novels centered around Paris during WWII, this one was all over the place and eye-roll inducing. I didn't find the structure to be successful, nor did I find the characters to be well-developed or even likable. The author spent more time describing the art pieces than imagining the lives of the characters.

With alternating chapters told by Solange at the beginning of the war and her grandmother in the late 1800s, the changes in their POV was very distracting. The technique was unsuccessful and didn't succeed in building a better story. My quick takeaways from each character are this: Solange is selfish and oblivious. Marthe is an oblivious courtesan. I'm sure there is truth to the whole "kept woman" concept, but wow, is that hard to read in this day and age. And Solange, as the Nazis are about to occupy Paris, all she can think of is her stupid books and her boyfriend. The biggest eye roll of them all was how her boyfriend got "excused" from the draft. Then their escape to South America was rushed and lacking any sympathy that one would imagine was experienced during that time. From all the other historical fiction books I've read about this era, this one just isn't plausible.

The inspiration for this story came from a real-life event, where an apartment was discovered untouched after 70 years. In my opinion, the author missed the best opportunity to tell a really good story. It was a struggle to finish. Such a disappointment.

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