Bayou Pages | “The Paris Library” by Janet Skeslien Charles

review by Meredith McKinnie

“Why books? Because no other thing possesses that mystical faculty to make people see with other people’s eyes. The Library is a bridge of books between cultures.”

No surprise, I’m a self-professed bibliophile, and gravitate towards books about books. Reading the intricate lives of book lovers feels akin to a night out with kindred spirits. I held onto this book for a month, waiting until I returned from Paris to see if I’d recognize landmarks, if I could glimpse the City of Lights in war-torn turmoil having just witnessed its revived splendor. Janet Skeslien Charles did not disappoint me. Our story alternates between first-person narratives, Odile residing in German-occupied Paris during World War II and Montana-based Lily, coming of age in the early 1980s.  

Odile chooses to stay and work at the Paris Library while her friends and neighbors flee the city, intent on escaping Hitler’s eventual takeover. While worried about her twin brother Remy on the front lines, Odile falls in love with a police officer at her father’s precinct and leans into her friendships with co-workers in the Library. The realities of war force Odile into fateful life decisions that challenge her familial and personal relationships. 

50 years later and a continent removed, 13-year-old Lily is navigating the sudden illness and death of her beloved mother and her father’s sudden interest in a new woman intent on becoming the family matriarch. Lily befriends Odile, a quirky Parisian woman who lives next door and falls in love with Odile’s idealized version of Paris, its language, and its culture. While traversing the stories told in tandem, readers uncover the secrets that landed Odile in the States and the nuanced reality of living life under German occupation. 

Charles introduces a bevy of beloved and quirky side characters, particularly those employed at the Paris Library who risk it all to keep book access available to all library patrons, regardless of Nazi dictates. Charles writes, “Books and ideas are like blood; they need to circulate, and they keep us alive.” Charles argues libraries, librarians, and books are essential to culture and livelihood. The esteemed respect the author possesses for reading and its vitality is grounded by the story’s backdrop, the ravaging of the world’s most romantic city at the whims of hatred and division. Reading this novel at a time of intense American polarization elevates the novel’s punch. I loved inhabiting this world and learning about the real-life efforts of librarians who kept stories alive even as 6 million people were tragically executed by the Nazi regime. Charles reminds us that heroes surfaced well beyond the battlefields. I recommend this novel to book lovers, those who favor the Holocaust genre, and anyone who loves being transported via stories. 

“People are awkward, they don’t always know what to do or say. Don’t hold it against them. You never know what’s in their hearts.”