Fantastic! I feel as though I make the comment of how good it is to see stories of women's resistance a lot when I read books like this - but it's true. These are the lives of remarkable and brave women and they deserve to be remembered.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Great descriptions and enjoyable plot and characters! I've not read this author before but will do so again in the future!

An excellent read from start to finish. Well crafted and researched, I engaged from the beginning.
Recommended.

This book covers the 1940's in Paris and the impact on the women who were there before, during and after the Nazi occupation. The author does a good job of addressing the issues and differences between those who were deported for being part of the resistance and for being Jewish. She also covers those who were considered collaboraters and what happenned to them after the war. What would have made this book even more appealing for me was if the author had more narrowly focused on a smaller group of women instead of the plethora described throughout the book.

I recomend this book for those looking for a deeper understanding of what women in Paris went through during the decade of the 1940s.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook and Twitter pages.

In advance of publication, I requested a NetGalley of this book since I was about to spend three months living in France and the subject interested me intensely. But somehow I just could not get into the book, and before I had even digested the first chapter, the NetGalley expired. Darn! Then I bought the audiobook from Audible, began again and -- voila! -- I was entranced. Anne Serba's research is impressive and important. Polly Stone's narration makes it much easier to consume. Soon after, I listened to Kristin Hannah's novel, "The Nightingale," and there was her voice again -- narrating a novel that covers the same subject: French women during World War II. The two would make a wonderful pair for book groups, feminists and Francophiles. I will never look at Paris quite the same way again

Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba was both hard to read and hard to put down. Intense story; fascinating details. A masterpiece! Highly recommended.

This was not what I expected. The focus of the book is stated as the "women of Paris" but the book pretty much only details the upper class women. Ultimately I found the lack of overall coverage of women of all classes reduced how compelling the story was/could be. On top of that, the author chose to mention woman after woman after woman with little detail and it just felt like stats being thrown at you. This method does not bring the circumstances to life, it just makes you feel like you're reading a list of women with a few details listed next to it. I also found that the author had no narrative arc except for time, although even that went out the window at times. Overall the book would have been more successful had the focus been on fewer women specifically or many women generally (no lists of names dammit!) and focused on specific issues rather than listing everything that occurred to people.

Overall the book felt like a really poorly edited thesis work that felt the need to include every detail that could be found. This could have been a compelling work on the impact of war on women during WWII, specifically in Paris, but it failed. I think it may have been buried under all that verbosity...somewhere.

Thought-provoking, and an interesting take on life in Paris during the war for women

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the occupation, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner. While Parisian men were either fighting at the front or captured and forced to work in German factories, the women of Paris were left behind where they would come face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis, as waitresses, shop assistants, or wives and mothers, increasingly desperate to find food to feed their families as hunger became part of everyday life.
When the Nazis and the puppet Vichy regime began rounding up Jews to ship east to concentration camps, the full horror of the war was brought home and the choice between collaboration and resistance became unavoidable. Sebba focuses on the role of women, many of whom faced life and death decisions every day. After the war ended, there would be a fierce settling of accounts between those who made peace with or, worse, helped the occupiers and those who fought the Nazis in any way they could.

A brilliantly researched book, covering the women who lived and worked in and around Paris during WW2, under Nazi occupation. There are multiple women here - at times, I found it a bit much - but, for the most part, it was a hugely enjoyable book that revealed some parts of history that should be shared and discussed.

What I was also impressed with was the other stuff that goes with making this story fascinating: the cultural history of Paris, the standing of women at the time, the politics of the time, even small things like descriptions of places and people, added some real depth and understanding to the time period.

Highly recommended for everyone!


Paul
ARH

It's a heavy read. The amount of research that went into this work is outstanding but overwhelming to the reader. Great "history you've never heard of" but you lose a bit of interest in learning about people that aren't household names.

Loved this book
Didn't want it to end
Highly recommended

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review. I am such a fan of World War II historical narratives. *Les Parisiennes* was very unique in that the author chronicles the lives of the women in and around Paris during the Nazi occupation. There was so much information that I often had trouble orienting myself to which woman the author was talking about in the context of the timeframe she was organizing chapters by. Other than a little bit of confusion here and there, I was hooked. I would definitely read more by this author.

St. Martin's Press and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation. This is my honest opinion of the book.

Les Parisiennes is the story of the women who struggled to survive in Paris during World War II. As the war rages on, the women must do what they can to help their families and their country.

This comprehensive look at the women of Paris, with their big and little acts of rebellion against the Germans, is often repetitive and lacks the punch of other World War II nonfiction stories. The author spent an exorbitant amount of time on the ways that the rich and powerful were able to help the cause, but did not capitalize on their harrowing stories. Having read several historical fiction books on life in France during World War II, I expected that Les Parisiennes would fill in the fictional stories with real details. I wanted to know more about the working class people who made a difference, the people who fought with no regards for their pockets. The book was repetitive in parts, especially in the middle. Les Parisiennes will help readers of World War II history fill in some of the blanks, but the book was not the homage to courageous women that I was expecting.

Anne Sebba explores what the life was life for Parisian women during World War II. The book is both narrow and broad in its scope. I really love when this is the case in nonfiction history books, and what I mean by this statement is this: Ms. Sebba selected a specific place and a specific time, but she does such a wonderful job detailing the connectivity of events that occurred. I think so often when we study history we come at it hoping to investigate a particular event, and it is easy to forget that in the past, as in the present, there are so many factors at play.

As such, Ms. Sebba discusses the life of the upper classes and the lower classes. She writes about women who fled Paris and women who stayed. The Vichy Government is infamous for its cooperation with and adoption of Nazi mandates, and Ms. Sebba writes of women who were involved with the Vichy government and the Nazis. I especially liked the chapters about women who defied Nazi rule and worked with the resistance as spies. And, as an art historian, I appreciated that Sebba wrote about the careful (and very dangerous) preservation of France's countless irreplaceable art works as well as the artists and patrons who were complicit with the Nazis. Sebba writes about women who were wives and lovers of political figures, women who were taken to concentration camps, women who worked for the Nazis, and women who resisted in any way they could. One running theme in the book is French fashion, and it was fascinating to learn about the different roles that fashion played in the war. I also appreciated that Ms. Sebba guides the readers through the postwar years as well, discussing the presence of the U.S. Servicemen and France's efforts to rebuild.

I've read a lot of fiction that is set in France during World War II, and reading Les Parisiennes made those books so much richer for me.

I really wanted to love this book, but I found it a little wordy and confusing as it switched back in forth in tone and people. The story and idea itself are fascinating. Les Parisiennes is the story of how woman lived and survived during the German occupation. It was about women from all walks of life - aristocratic women, working women, women of the resistance, those who suffered and were placed in concentration camps; women who had to do just about anything in order to keep their families alive during and after the war. It highlights women as they heroically undertook and survived during and after the occupation.

If I could give this book ten stars, I would. What a carefully woven picture of history we are given with Anne Sebba's remarkable book. The research is meticulous and precise; the lives we are drawn into are each a portrait in themselves. I started 2016 with Ravensbruck, and that was another magnificent book of documentation. This book stands aside that one and also A Train in Winter. Essential reading to understand what happened in France during the Occupation. Do not let yourself get sidetracked by trying to keep track of the historical figures in the book, just read along, and learn their stories. You'll defeat the purpose of the book if you don't just go with it. Wonderfully done. Wonderfully done. If you want a recap of Lilac Girls, go read Lilac Girls again. This book will require more from you.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

The only reason for 4 instead of 5 stars is that sometimes the writing was disjointed and choppy (particularly the first half of the book), making it hard to follow and comprehend. Otherwise, this is a book that was well-researched and should be read. I needed to read this book in small doses, as it is powerful and thought-provoking as you can see from all my questions below. Sebba takes us through the lives of French women during World War II, from occupation to liberation and through reconstruction. There are vignettes about women from every class, prostitutes to royalty, as well as resistance fighters to collaborators.

The book goes into great detail of how the fashion houses continued to operate, albeit on a limited scale, during the war. Style and couture are a distinct trait of Les Parisiennes, and that may have included the need for a matching tote for your gas mask, or using parachute silk to make stockings. Far from being vanity, I look at this as a means of hanging onto any shred of normalcy these women could find. However, I found the most interesting parts of the book to be the individual women’s stories, especially the incredibly courageous women who joined the resistance. “Heroism isn’t a matter of choice, but of reflex” based on moral values. Would I have been so brave? Would I have been so morally certain that I needed to do the right thing, even if it cost my life? What about my children’s lives? Wouldn’t I want someone to do that for me?

At the time, French women were not allowed to vote, could not have bank accounts and were not able to find employment without their father or husband’s approval. How do they survive once war begins and men are called to the front? If sex with the enemy becomes a commodity perhaps vital to your existence, how does a beautiful young mother with children to feed respond? Later, this mother likely would have been publicly humiliated by having her head shaved, paraded naked through town, spit on and beaten. But was that collaboration, or simply survival? There are stories of brave concierges who would lie to the Nazi’s about their tenants, or help hide them. There is also one concierge who sells out a family for a pair of silver candlesticks. How did this woman pass by those candlesticks in her dining room each day and not see the ghosts of those she betrayed? Why did some offer only to help others in return for payment? As a resistance fighter, would I have the strength to take drugs and starve myself to mimic ovarian cancer in order to stay alive and continue with my mission?

Liberation and reconstruction are also covered, and how sad that some were not welcomed home from concentration camps. Indeed, there were different classifications for reparations, with resisters receiving more than victims (concentration camp survivors), causing even more social division as the victims were predominantly the Jews and Gypsies. The suicide rate for camp survivors is reported at three times that of the general population, and so heart-wrenching to know that those who managed to survive the horror of the campus were sometimes unable to survive in the outside world.

For further reading, I would recommend Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp by Sarah Helm as well as the historical novel Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, which is based on true accounts.

It is not for the rest of us to judge but, with imagination, we can try to understand.

This is one of the most well-written Nazi period books that I've read in a long time. The courage that these brave women showed in such terrible circumstances is astonishing. Reading about the lives and deaths of so many who were faced with impossible odds and managed to overcome them made me think about how lucky I am not to be in such a situation.

The stories of these women are personal, emotional and left me thinking about them even when the book was finished. This would be a great book for anyone wanting to know more about women during this time and their role in one of the most interesting, yet saddest periods of history. I recommend this book to teachers, and anyone curious about a side of the Nazi movement that we don't hear about very often.

The author was meticulous in her research and brought together a well-organised book with a lot of good information.

This review is based on a complementary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

The woman of Paris who survived WWII did so in one of three ways. They kept their heads down and tried to survive, they became resistors and fought the Germans or they collaborated with the enemy. The book is very well researched and had a great many women featured. It was difficult to keep track of all of them at times. Women who were famous and were featured so the average everyday housewife was not part of the research. I found it interesting but I had to take breaks to be sure that I absorbed the contents. The pre, during and post invasion periods were well represented. This book is a true testament to the strength and tenacity of the Parisienne women from the WWII era.