Miranda Richmond Mouillot

Mouillot, Miranda Richmond. A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War and a Ruined House in France. New York: Crown Publishers, 2015.

Reason read: an Early Review book from LibraryThing.

Here's what I loved about Mouillot's memoir straight away: she was unapologetic about the inaccuracies in her book. She admits a lot of her documentation is based on conversations and possible faulty memories. From some reason, that admission alone makes it all the more real to me.

How does a relationship go from just show more that, a relationship, to a subject for a book? When I think about Mouillot's grandparents and their fifty year silence I find myself asking, what makes this divorce any different from other relationship that crashed and burned? Could we all write a story about a relationship that fell apart? Well, yes and no. Add World War II, being Jewish and escaping the Holocaust and suddenly it's not just about a couple who haven't spoken to each other. It's a mystery of survival on many different levels. While Mouillot's account is choppy and sometimes hard to follow I found myself rooting for her. I wanted her to discover the mysteries of love and relationships, especially since her own love life was blossoming at the same time.

We aren't supposed to quote from the book until it has been published but I have to say I hope this sentence stays, "How do you break a silence that is not your own?" (from the preface). I love, love, love this question. It should be on the cover of the book because it grabs you by the heart and throttles your mind into wanting to know more. Maybe that's just me. Case in point: I was drawn into the show, "The Closer" after hearing Brenda say, "If I wanted to be called bitch to my face I'd still be married" in a promo. One sentence and I was hooked. Sometimes, that is all it takes. show less

A good book, stunning in it’s revelation of the human tragedy. Miranda Richmond Mouillot’s maternal grandparents haven’t spoken to each other for fifty years. The lure of this enigma draws the author inexorably into the search for answers. At some point surely, they must have loved one another. Why else marry and eventually give birth to Miranda’s mother, Angele. Both grandparents, Anna and Armand, found themselves Jewish refugees in Nazi occupied France during World war II. After show more evading capture and deportation to a concentration camp, the couple sought sanctuary in neutral Switzerland. Their marriage in 1944, did not work for very long. After the war, Anna would pursue her medical studies and practice apart from Armand. He found work as an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials in Germany where many of the leading Nazis were brought to justice. Miranda is mesmerized by the fact that her grandfather, after enduring so much together with her grandmother during the war, cannot even hear Anna’s name without flying into a rage. Traveling to France, Miranda settles into an old medieval stone house that her grandmother, Anna, bought after leaving her husband. The ramshackle house reflects the current state of the relationship between Anna and Armand. Miranda resolves to rescue not only the house, but perhaps the relationship as well. If nothing else, she determines to solve the riddle of her grandparents breakup. Much heart warming emotion and love are evident in this book. It is well worth reading. This book provided for review by Crown Publishers. show less

A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War, and a Ruined House in France is an entrancing memoir written by Miranda Richmond Mouillot as she puzzles out the fifty-year estrangement between her grandparents, Anna and Armand. By entrancing, I started to read this book after dinner and did not look up from it until I finished it nearly four hours later. I only looked up from it when my cat nudged his head between the book and my face for a few minutes of attention.

Miranda's life has always been haunted by show more her grandparents' history. She has nonspecific anxieties, about the need to escape in a hurry, about being prepared to flee. She realizes this was imparted by her mother and her grandmother - two people who were incapable of giving the usual "That'll never happen," assurances that most families naturally give their children when they ask about whether their house will burn down or other imagined frights. As Holocaust survivors, that kind of certainty is not possible.

However, it is not that her grandmother Anna is a fearful woman. Just the opposite, she is lively, optimistic, one of those wonderful people persons who never meets a stranger. She is loving, warm and what my family would call a real pistol. She is doing yoga in her 80s, teaching her granddaughter to read fortunes in the cards—so she always has a skill to fall back on. She loves life and is a vivid, active woman.

In contrast, her grandfather, Armand, is tightly wound, obsessively controlled in his personal habits, demanding and sparing with his affection. He collects grievances like most people collect recipes, actually keeping them in a binder so he never forgets exactly why he has exiled people from his life. And yet, he loves Miranda, but she knows always, that she must not trespass, that his boundaries are inviolate.

Anna and Armand were Jewish refugees in Geneva, having escaped France together. Miranda is certain there must be some great secret in their past because they have not spoken to each other for more than fifty years. After the war, her grandmother left her grandfather. She went to America and worked as a psychiatrist at Rockland State Mental Hospital. Her grandfather stayed in Geneva, working as one of the interpreters at the Nuremberg Trials before continuing to work as an interpreter for the rest of his life. Even for the great events of Miranda's life, her bat mitzvah and graduation, Armand would not come because he would never be in the same place as Anna. His hatred is complete.

Her grandparents' alienation from each other is so complete that it never even occurs to Miranda that her grandparents were ever in the same place in their lives, not even realizing for the longest time that for them both to be her grandparents, they must have been together.

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/a-fifty-year-silence-by-m... show less

I love bios, but, sometimes, bios can be a little too bio-y; that is, bios are published that are eagerly read by family and friends but hold much less interest for the general public. Sometimes, too, the author finds dead ends in his research and putties the holes with trivial conjecture. And, finally, sometimes what starts as a story of a person moves into a story of side character or even the writer himself.

I’m happy to tell you that A Fifty-Year Silence didn’t take any of these show more joyless paths. Mouillot tells the
story of her grandparents based on years of intense research in a way that reveals subtle truths
about all people. A compelling and fascinating story. show less