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| New York: Harper, 2014 |
Primarily the story of Lou Villars, a French athlete, race car driver, butch lesbian, and in the end a collaborator with the Nazis, Prose's novel begins in the mid 1920s and continues through World War II and the liberation of France. At the center of the story is the Chameleon Club, a cabaret in Paris where our diverse characters first meet and the famous photograph that provides the book's title is taken.
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Brassai
Lesbian Couple at
The Monocle, 1932 |
The novel is told by turns through the letters of Gabor Tsenyi (based on
Brassai), a Hungarian photographer who documents the underbelly of Paris as it moves toward the German occupation, the memoirs of Lily de Rossignol (a baroness married to a gay man) who surrounds herself with artists and art, the writings of Lionel Maine (
Henry Miller), a controversial American writer and a present day biography of Lou Villars herself.
Although much of the novel's action is revealed on the dust jacket, there remain a few surprises. It's an insanely well-written, smart novel that had me vacillating between reading quickly to find out what happens next and reading slowly because I didn't want it to end.
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