A Question of Loyalties

This is a very well written novel, exploring the nature of loyalty and collaboration and the difficult choices people have to make. No doubt many people in France had to make such choices in 1940 and it was never easy, but I did feel that the author, through his characters, was a little TOO soft on the adherents of the Vichy regime. I found the characters mostly rather unsympathetic. The attitude of so many French people at this time is vividly drawn and depressing - a mixture of fatalism at the impending German invasion and grudging respect for German success, plus an alarming level of anti-semitism among ordinary French people. This was certainly not an uplifting read, though very thought provoking.

Recommended by Nicholas Shakespeare The Week 18Jan14. If anyone needs a virtuoso example of what fiction can do that history can’t, I would direct them to this novel. It renders Vichy France absolutely palpable in a way I have not read before: in all its abysmal compromises, hatreds, self-loathings, betrayals, silences.