Books in The Paris Library

Janet Skeslien Charles' The Paris Library (2021) is a novel that leads us through Paris under occupation, mainly narrated by Odile, a book-loving French girl (her father is a police inspector) who gets a job, in early 1939, at the American Library in Paris. 

It's thick with the titles of Odile's beloved books. Jane Eyre, As You Like It, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald.... But there's also many that I didn't know much about, or had forgotten about. (We also get some of  Lily's favourite books in her part of the novel, set in Montana from 1983.)

p. 4 Isak Dinesen  aka Karen Blixen. Her Out of Africa was published in 1937. 

p. 6 Zora Neale Hurston "my favourite living author". Harlem Renaissance novelist, best known for Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). See also p. 63, p. 82, p. 98, p. 185, p. 212, p. 322, p. 405. (Odile's favourite dead author is Dostoevsky.) 

p. 31 A Season in Hell. Rimbaud's extended poem in prose (1873).

p. 56 Clara de Chambrun, Playing with Souls. Novel published in 1922. [She is one of the historical characters in this novel, too.]

p. 62 Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth (1801); famous for depicting an inter-racial marriage. The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, by Olaudah Equiano, former slave and abolitionist (1789). My Ántonia, novel by Willa Cather (1918), one of her best-known (see also. p. 393).

p. 68 Dorothy Whipple, The Priory (novel, 1939) (see also p. 75 and p. 270 ff.). Popular author between the wars, born in Blackburn. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: 1938 novel by Winifred Watson. 

p. 74 The Death of the Heart. 1938 novel by Elizabeth Bowen. 

p. 75 Miss Maisy: untraced, apparently a children's story. 

p. 119. The Little Prince, novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, published in USA in 1943, and in France after liberation. 

p. 134. Voyage in the Dark, 1934 novel by Jean Rhys. See also p. 367.

p. 139 Good Morning, Midnight, 1939 novel by Jean Rhys. (See also p. 299-300, p. 340.)

p. 145 All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque. 

p. 155. Nevada, 1928 novel by Zane Grey.

p. 178 Refers to the attack on Mers-el-Kébir (3/7/1940) in which the British scuttled French ships and killed over a 1,000 French sailors. 

p. 185. The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1940), a semi-autobiographical children's book (see also p. 197, Odile reads it when just published). A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1943 bestseller by Betty Smith. 

p. 193 Bridge to Terebithia, 1977 children's novel by Katherine Paterson. Also p. 393. 

p. 212 Greenbanks. Another novel by Dorothy Whipple, published in 1932. 

p. 228 The Age of Innocence, 1920 novel by Edith Wharton.

p. 241 And Then There Were None. by Agatha Christie. The US title (1940); published in the UK as Ten Little Niggers (1939). 

p. 242 "Hope is the thing with feathers", poem by Emily Dickinson. 

p. 259. "I want today, now. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nancy Mitford, Langston Hughes." (Mr Pryce-Jones). Nancy Mitford published three novels before the war, though her better-known ones come later. Langston Hughes, another member of the Harlem Renaissance. His first novel was published in 1930, first short story collection in 1934. 

p. 267. Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie. Two of Nancy Mitford's novels, from 1932 and 1940 respectively. 

p. 269 Bella the Goat and Homer the Cat. Untraced children's books. 

p. 318. Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, published 1915. English translation published in 1937.

p. 327 The Silence of the Sea. Le Silence de la mer, secretly published in occupied Paris in early 1942. By Jean Bruller under the pseudonym "Vercors". 

p. 385 Forever, 1975 young-adult novel by Judy Blume, controversial for detailed descriptions of sex and birth control. 

p. 393 Roots, 1976 novel by Alex Haley.