Book Review: The Book of Lost Names

A few weekends ago, I found myself on a short road trip, driving four hours each way over the course of a weekend to visit family in another state. At first, I used the time to work through a few podcasts, but then decided to delve into an audio book I'd recently started, but hadn't truly had the time to get into: The Book of Lost Names.

Set in France during World War II, The Book of Lost Names by Kristen Harmel is the story of Eva Traube Abrams, a Jewish woman who discovers she has a talent for forgery and uses it to help hundreds of Jewish children escape to safety in Switzerland, at great risk to herself and those she loves. As a lover of history, historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, and I am especially drawn to the World War II timeframe. Add in a mystery, a present day/past timeline, a bit of a love story—what's not to like?

The storyline was intriguing. After Eva and her mother escaped being rounded up and began making a plan to flee Nazi-occupied Paris, I had to know what happened next. Following the advice of a friend, Eva creates false papers for her mother and herself and seek refuge in a town located in France's free zone where the citizens are rumored to help Jews in need of escape. (While towns like this existed, Aurignon is fictional.) Once there, Eva finds friends who become like family and soon finds herself firmly entrenched in the work of the resistance.

The story also takes place in two time periods, with an older Eva looking back and providing details in 2005 and a younger Eva who acts as the book's main narrator and protagonist.

The story is compelling—heart-wrenching in places as you begin to think of the true horrors people faced during World War II. But at times, character development falls flat. Take Eva's mother, for instance. Grief-stricken when her husband is rounded up by the Paris police and shipped away to a "work camp," Eva's mother continually insists that she and Eva must go after him—even after it becomes incredibly clear how dangerous and foolhardy that would be. Then, faced with the reality that her daughter may be the only living family she has left, Eva's mother become bitter and vindictive, repeatedly blaming her daughter for everything bad that has befallen them and spewing hateful, vicious words at Eva whenever she can. While we all handle grief, fear and the unknown in different ways, I find it highly unlikely that a woman who apparently loved her family and her daughter as much as we're led to believe Eva's mother did would turn into this one-note, shrewish caricature of a character. When she does say something nice about her daughter, it happens "off-camera" and is only reported back to the reader by another character. Honestly, after all the blame and vitriol, it's hard to believe.

The Book of Lost Names is one of those books where everything gets tied up in a nice little bow by the end of the story. While that's not exactly realistic, it is somewhat satisfying, even if the plot is at times predictable and the characters can be a bit underdeveloped. At the end, I was smiling, and in these stressful days, that's something to celebrate.

But I also figured out who the traitor was pretty early in the novel, making that reveal at the end of the book fairly unfulfilling.

The audio book is narrated by Madeleine Maby, who does an excellent job of voicing the older and younger Eva, as well as Eva's mother's Polish accent.