Vassar, 1930, the reader is introduced to the characters- you begin to see the discordance, what is in balance and what is unknowable. The book was a confusion for me - you might think that was a typo or the wrong word, but it is a perfect description for me.

I am not sure what the author hoped the reader would come away with. Surely a story of trying to save children doomed by their religious background. Surely a story about several women who travel after college on an adventure of sorts. Surely a story of women’s relationships with each other. Unfortunately the retelling was not very interesting. A background for one of the most important poets of the last century but lacking in clear direction.

There is much loneliness, solitude, artistic passion and single-mindedness within the pages and yet somehow it wasn’t enough to carry the story. Well written but underdeveloped and disappointing.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a copy.

I liked the cover of the book. I also liked the concept of the book after I read the synopsis. However, the writing failed to engage my interest from the outset. I couldn't bring myself to get interested in this book. It was a total pass for me.

I received a copy of this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I started reading this book not knowing anything about the poet, Elizabeth Bishop. It starts out in 1937 just before WW2 breaks out. Elizabeth and her friends are in Paris. The story seemed to jump around a lot and I felt like I could never figure out exactly what was going on. I was interested in her trip with Clara and wish that would have been more developed. I think that would have been a more interesting story. The later chapters seemed to skip ahead by decades and It all felt so disjointed. 2.5/5

This book was received as an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, Simon & Schuster, in exchange for an honest review.

I had been looking forward to reading this account of our American poetess and was thrilled to get an early read.
I’m not sure exactly what to say about the manner in which the story was written. Perhaps, the author was trying to emulate the poetic style of Elizabeth Bishop in a novel, but it just didn’t work. Additionally, she forewent the use of normal punctuation, including quotation marks, but had her characters conversing.

After several frustrating hours trying to get into this hoped for book, I simply gave up and did not finish. The story line was something I am vitally interested in, so that was quite disappointing.

This is a book I found myself thinking about long after I had read the last page. It is a beautifully written book that honors the story and art of Poet Elizabeth Bishop. The book not only tells a story but tells it in a rich and poetic way that adds to the depth and reach of the story. It should be noted that the story actually does cover more than just the lost 3 weeks of Bishop’s journal. The book starts during her time at Vassar in the ’30s and concludes with brief details of her life up until her death in the ’70s. This, however, gives important context to the lost 3 weeks and a greater understanding of the complexity of Elizebeth Bishop. Both the content of Paris 7:00 AM and the author’s writing style kept me engaged and captivated throughout! As such, I enthusiastically recommend it! I was honored to receive a free advanced copy of this book from NetGalley and the Publisher, Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review.

Serendipity

On Monday, April 15, Notre-Dame was in flames.
A horrified world watched, joined in tears.
***
On Tuesday, April 16, during my husband's surgery,
I was in a waiting room
reading Liz Wieland's Paris, 7 A.M.

And I read, "The crazy quilt of languages around Notre-Dame,"
and I read, "The being that will appear will emerge from the guest bedroom
will be hideous, a sort of gargoyle
come down off the sheer facade of Notre-Dame,"
and I read, "In an hour, it's lighting a candle in Notre-Dame,"
and I read, "the great squatting hulk of Notre-Dame,"

while the television in the waiting room aired
photographs and videos of the "great squatting hulk",
the gleam of the cross rising out of the ashes like a beacon.

I have never seen Notre-Dame or Paris or France.
I have not had the luck to have been a traveler.
No memories rushed forward, just sorrow for what was lost.

But the book brought Paris alive for me,
albeit a Paris from long before my birth,
a Paris just before the war,
with intimations of war
quivering in the atmosphere.

The Novel

Geography

In 1937, the young poet Elizabeth Bishop and two Vassar friends
traveled to Paris.
For three weeks, Elizabeth did not write in her journal.

Liz Wieland wondered about that silence
and imagined Bishop's life over those missing weeks,
the mysteries she held close and never revealed.

Elizabeth and her friends,
full of youthful optimism
in spite of the disorder on the continent.

Louise of the blue eyes.
Anaphora. Margaret's horrid accident.

And the people they meet,

Sigrid who married for safety,
and the Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun
who sees in Elizabeth her deceased daughter
who sees in Elizabeth a co-conspirator.

Paris 7 A.M. reflects Bishop's poetic voice, steals her imagery
and the titles of her books of poetry, Easter eggs
left to find in the days before Easter when I was reading.
So many hidden in the paragraphs beyond my ken.

"And then the clocks speak," I read.

The clocks, the time, the water, sailing,
the drinking, the women,
the traveling, and the traveling.

"Why do you travel?" I read. Questions of Travel.
And she answers, "To be free." "To see beauty."

It was coming, people sensed, knew
the world would shift again, war inevitable.
"The world is getting so ugly," I read.
"The swastika, a headless spider," I read.

The Jewish babies lovingly handed over
by desperate loving mothers
to traveling into stranger's arms
to travel into another mother's arms.

Elizabeth's mother could not mother
Elizabeth would never become a mother
Elizabeth was a midwife in the babies rebirth.

Elsewhere
Back to the known, Wieland's pen
flirts across the years
touching like a butterfly on a flower
upon Bishop's travels.
Florida. Brazil. America.
Letters from Marianne Moore, Sigrid, Louise.
Sailing with 'Cal' Lowell.
A summation of a life's losses.

And I read,
"Does everybody live such divided lives, Elizabeth wonders: one self moving about the world like all the other million selves, and another that's stuck somewhere behind?"

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

What I liked about this book:
As in all Historical Fiction, interesting characters to Google and learn more about.
Lovely prose.

What I disliked:
The book was a mess. Constantly backtracking to figure our who is talking, or where the scene changed and how did we get here.
So oblige! Thank God for Google to explain what the author seemed unable to convey.

I was unfamiliar with Elizabeth Bishop when I began to read this lovely and well written novel. Set in WWII, this imagines a year in the life of this amazing poet, her personal growth, her friendships, and a special challenge to make a difference. I will definitely recommend this book!

Gosh, this book. This is a loving tribute to Elizabeth Bishop in the form of a novel that reads a bit like an extended Bishop poem. I have long loved Bishop's work, but knew pretty much nothing about her life. Paris, 7 A.M. is a bit experimental, in that it doesn't worry about explaining how Elizabeth-the-character gets from place (physical, situational, relational) to place. Time passes between the chapters and we are not filled in (the intervals are longer and longer as the novel winds to an end). Other characters come and go and we are not told everything but left to guess, or not. I didn't bother guessing. I went with the incredible language and Wieland's evocation of Bishop's mind and her many mind-states.

After I finished I rooted around in the interwebz and found that Bishop had a really tortured childhood and a life full of pain. There is clear intimation of this in the novel (the running theme of abandonment), but this is not a painful novel. At least it wasn't for me. As I said, a lot is left off the page and you can fill in the blanks by looking stuff up, or not. I have to say that I felt some frustration at first: why isn't Wieland telling us more? But Elizabeth feels so lost, so mystified for much of the time -- just really confused at the world around her -- that I thought, Okay, so Wieland is giving us Bishop's mind, and the fogginess of the novel reflects Bishop's own fogginess.

There is also, by necessity, a sense of ominousness. The Paris part leads us up to the brink of full Nazi takeover (there is already some Nazi takeover) and you know, people go about their business, I mean, they are alarmed, they are worried, but they are nowhere near as terrified by the doom that right around the corner as they should be. And this put me very much in mind of the USA now, cuz I am feeling this doom every day, and yet go about my life, feeling fundamentally untouched, fundamentally safe. Hard to imagine that Wieland didn't have this in mind when she wrote the book. So I'm going to call this my third Trumpian novel, after Sandra Newman's The Heavens and Lark Benobi's Book of Dog.

Lastly, I confess I would have liked more lesbian action. This is me. The book overflows with lesbian desire and it is clear that Elizabeth is getting love and tenderness and sex and reciprocation. Still, maybe leaving it to the imagination is good too.

I loved this book, I loved discovering this author, and I'm looking forward to my backlog of novels by her!

This is a fictional account of the poet Elisabeth Bishop and her coming of age during WWII. It was interesting and I enjoyed reading it. The ending seemed a bit rushed though.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

Thank you to the publisher and author for providing me with a digital ARC of this title via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I really thought I would like this book a lot more then I did and after reading other reviews on goodreads, I see I am not the only one that felt this way. I love historical fiction based on truth. I know nothing of Elizabeth Bishop and looked forward to learning about her while enjoying Paris and a time period that I find fascinating. I could not get into this book and found the narrative style to be so difficult to read. I hated that it felt like I was reading a book of someone telling me what they were reading in the real book. The narrator is not a character in the story. Someone just kept saying, "she said.." and "Elizabeth replied..:". It was distracting, disengaging, and hard to follow. I was bored, bored and had no desire to keep reading. This was unfortunately a huge let down and not a book I want to finish or that I would recommend.

I received an ARC of Paris, 7 A.M. from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

I absolutely loved this book until the final few chapters. Wieland's fictionalized telling of American poet Elizabeth Bishop's post college life is extremely well done. Stylistically, Wieland does not bother with quotation marks to indicate dialogue. Yet the voices of her characters, Elizabeth and her friends, are distinct and clear. There are times that Wieland uses bits of Bishop's poems in describing a scene or a character but that would be lost if a reader is unfamiliar with Bishop's poetry

The beginning of this novel places Elizabeth still as a college student, full of literary promise but rather adrift. She and her friends have money so the basic necessities of life are never in question. But Elizabeth has a troubled and lonely past that impacts her emotional and physical response to everything. Her father had died when she was very young; her mother was institutionalized for years and eventually died without connecting with Elizabeth. Her family past becomes the curtain through which she views new events, new people. Her college friends and lovers become overly important fixtures in her life since they are now her family.

Visiting Paris in 1937 may seem foolish now; at the time it was what wealthy white American girls did. There Elizabeth meets a variety of people of different nationalities who dread (or look forward to) the oppressive Nazi regime and the possibility of war. Real life people like Robert Seaver, Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Ernst vom Rath, and the Polish boy (Herschel Grynszpan) thread throughout the novel as well as some fictionalized characters who may or may not be based on actual individuals. As part of her fictionalized view of Bishop, Wieland has the usually reticent Elizabeth become involved in the rescue of Jewish babies. This involvement changes how she views life and people and the future. It was necessary for me to research some of these characters, e.g. Polish boy, since I couldn't make all the connections that Wieland outlines. If a reader does not make that effort I am not sure that the book will be as enjoyable.

The last few chapters zip through the remainder of Elizabeth's life. And here is where Wieland just went too fast. Lovers and jobs and places are more suggested than portrayed. Instead of trying to fit in the end of Elizabeth's life, it would have been better to end the novel with Elizabeth on the journey back to America, her life still an open question.

All in all, I did enjoy this book but I know it is not for everyone.
#NetGalley #Paris7AM

A wonderfully rendered sense of time and place and an usual heroine ambitiously fill in the blank of a missing year. A smart and insightful read.

God. I loved this book. Some highlights:
Chapter 12

I don’t think you can understand the past in the order things happened. That’s the mistake most people make.

Chapter 20
Maybe suicide doesn’t really exist. Maybe it’s just a different kind of murder.

Chapter 23
I think a madwoman and an artist are alike in a way. They’re intense and single-minded. They cannot be distracted from their passions. They’re not like normal people.

Chapter 29
Sadness never ends and regret is impossible to escape.

Chapter 31
The drinking helps until it doesn’t. But then it helps again the next day.

Though the events of this book center on the experiences of a young Elizabeth Bishop during a trip to Paris with friends in 1937, I would argue that the novel is more successful as a presentation of Bishop’s coming of age as a poet than it is about the heightened tensions of a pre-war Europe, or about Elizabeth’s short stint in an underground resistance network, as is emphasized in the book’s blurb.

On the surface, this book is beautifully written. I particularly enjoyed the lyricism of the prose, and how it allows you to view the strange details and small beauties of the world through Elizabeth's eyes as if she can’t help but see poetry in every little thing. Fans of Bishop's poetry will enjoy picking out elements and themes from the story that later appear in her published work, such as the clocks in Clara's apartment and the emphasis on time that features in the title's namesake poem, “Paris, 7 A.M.”.

Thematically, I found Elizabeth's relationships with other women, both platonic and romantic, to be the most compelling element in this novel. Her own mother having been mentally ill and absent for most of her life, Elizabeth’s development as both a character and a poet is clearly helped along by the mothering of each of her female friends, mentors, and lovers. The eventual role-reversal when Elizabeth becomes a temporary mother to the twin girls she and Clara help to smuggle into Paris was far more interesting to me symbolically than was the actual undertaking, which I thought was far too short-lived and anticlimactic despite my expectation that it would comprise a larger portion of the novel’s plot. Overall, though, I appreciated the insight into Elizabeth’s personal life and enjoyed getting to see an interpretation of the famously private poet as a young woman with all of her human fallibilities.

I did have some qualms with the ending passages which fast-forwarded through the rest of Elizabeth’s life, because they felt rushed and I didn’t think they added much to the story other than to provide biographical context. Ultimately, though, I did enjoy this book, and it led me to pick up a copy of Bishop’s complete poems, which I believe is a testament to the book’s success in honoring Bishop’s memory and her work.

Due the point of view of how this story was told, I just could not continue with it. From the fragments to the passive way of writing dialogue, I just could not continue with this novel. Good luck to those who soldier on beyond where I could.

This beautifully, crafted novel of historical fiction, relates events in the life of poet Elizabeth Bishop while visiting Paris on the brink of World War II. Bishop, a meticulous keeper of journals, had a three-week gap in her journal of 1937. She has just graduated from Vassar College and is not yet the poet she will become. Wieland poses a scenario between Bishop and an older-women, who recruits her into helping rescue two Jewish children, placing them into a convent and saving them from the holocaust. The story shows her introduction to Marianne Moore, who will be her mentor and while in France, Bishop meets Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney and German deputy ambassador Ernst vom Rath (his assassination was used as the pretext for Kristallnacht). The remaining chapters move quickly through the rest of Elizabeth’s life and relationships, touching briefly on her friendship with the poet Robert Lowell.

There is a dream-like quality to Wieland’s prose, lending the writing a feeling of surrealism. What is real and what is imagined? Bishop seems to be standing back and observing the events unfolding around her, trying to decide her place in what she sees. There is a strong sense of time and place, and the relationships Bishop has with the women, who were possibly her lovers, is handled gently. I would recommend this novel to fans of Elizabeth Bishop, as well as fans of historical fiction.

After reading the synopsis for this book I knew this book might be for me. It was about a time and place that I'm very interested in and have read plenty about. I enjoy reading about WWII and how it affected different people and countries differently. Plus I didn't know much about Elizabeth Bishop the poet.
Unfortunately this book did not do it for me. The writing style was not for me. I don't know if I was expecting something more journal style or more poetic, but it felt a bit staccato-like and abrupt. One minute it is talking ABOUT Elizabeth and the next minute it says "I". Perhaps that was the poetic style, but it did not flow for me and didn't work for the story. I felt like we got a lot of NY Vassar times with Elizabeth and her friends, but I didn't feel fully invested in them. By the time they got to Paris, I was skimming the pages. The turn around happened when there was a very unfortunate car accident and that part pulled me in slightly. Still, the writing style threw me. Elizabeth was a very interesting character and I wish I got more information from this story about her during this horrific time. She was a giving person and love fiercely in her own way, but I wish I would've gotten that more thoughout the story.
Story was mediocre at best for me, but it did have potential. Just wasn't for me.
Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC.

As I did not know very much about Elizabeth Bishop, I found this to be an interesting read. There were parts that dragged on in my opinion, but overall I did learn a lot about her life. Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Paris, 7 a.m. by Liza Wieland

I didn’t know anything about the poet Elizabeth Bishop, before this book, and this story didn’t draw me any closer to knowing her. The story mostly covered Bishop’s time at Vassar and her stay in Paris with her girlfriends pre WWII.

Although there are references to Hitler and the approaching war in Europe while they were in Paris, no real tension or fear was created for the reader for this time period.

The author’s writing was hard to follow, and truthfully, the story wasn’t that compelling until Elizabeth goes off to Normandy with her friend Clara. That section of the book was spectacular, as the reader had no clue as to what was about to happen. The story needed more of this drama to keep my interest.

Wieland’s writing is like a poem with no rhythm. It’s pretty in parts, but doesn’t carry you through. Very suddenly, you are in another place with a conversation about someone new and you wonder how you got there. I’m sure this is intentional on the author’s part, but it didn’t appeal to me.