I just completed reading a book titled The Paris Girl. No, it is not about a fashion model or a perfume. This story is about a nineteen-year-old girl and her eighteen-year-old brother who formed a resistance group to outwit the Nazis during WWII. The story is genuine and written by the daughter of Andree Griotteray. The story takes place between 1939 and 1944 and depicts an idyllic life in France before and the horrors after the Nazi invasion until the Americans liberated France.
Aside from being a good narrative about her operations as a member of her brother Alaine’s resistance group, Orion, it describes living under the occupation of the Nazis. Life was not easy, but yet it was not terrible either. The Germans kept Paris untouched so they would have a playground to enjoy life as they plundered the rest of Europe. In the process of enjoying life, they used the French people as their slaves and treated them as such. The Nazis treated women differently, provided of course, that the women cooperated with them.
I found myself absorbed in this story because there is an element of intrigue when Andree transports messages from France to Spain. In one such vignette, Andree must transport gold coins from the Orion headquarters in South France back to Paris. The money would be used to pay for information. To avoid the Nazis from finding the coins if she is searched, she ingeniously sews the coins into a girdle and wears them to Paris. Andree continues her social life with boys throughout the war to avoid detection, but she avoids dating German soldiers.
The author relies heavily on Andree’s diaries, which she kept throughout her life. I give this story four stars.
griotteray
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