Noah's Reviews > Why in Paris

This is the life, bo-bo, bo-bo, bo, Bohemia~aa (Boho Days - Jonathan Larson)! You know, sometimes I love a book so much that most positive descriptors don’t match up to what I’m feeling inside, like I’m about to explode with positivity! I usually just work back around to calling things “so good,” and call it a day. Anyway, ahh this book was so good! Okay, so I’m going to try to summarize the plot, none of which will be a spoiler because this book has the most detailed blurb out there, but mostly for myself because it gets pretty complicated at points and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. We follow a young Jewish man named Anders, as he travels to Paris to seek out the bohemian life of an artist. Only he learns at his university that he has no real interest in the more traditional arts and quickly pivots into the unknown (at the time) medium of photography. This eventually leads to him falling hard for an aspiring model Jean, and they become locally famous for Anders’ masterful eye and Jeans beauty. One thing leads to the next and suddenly Anders finds work in secretly photographing Nazi’s in compromising positions as a security measure and as a form of blackmail. Sounds like a rather unorthodox form of resistance, yeah? Well, what do you do when you can’t do nothing, but there’s nothing you can do? ...You do what you can. This was an incredibly powerful and harrowing tale of how a gay man’s pursuit of something more in life quickly turns into a struggle for survival under Nazi occupied Paris and then into one of resistance and eventually liberation. And the novel’s resolution was pure perfection! Chef's kiss! Sometimes violence is the answer! I also loved how the poetic prose was juxtaposed with the harsh subject matter, showing that these character’s spirit was never really destroyed, and never could be. This feels less like a novel, and more like a declaration; queer-folk have always been here, and we always will be.

”We are history. How many gays in how many generations had faced the same, or worse? How many had breakfasted, laughed with friends, held hands with lovers as the spiral of history conspired against them? How many Jews?”