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RESISTING THE ENEMY
The occupation of conquered countries by the Nazis has been a rich source of drama for writers of fiction and film. Nowhere has this been better explored than in France, where a Collaborationist government was set up at Vichy and German soldiers were billeted on French families. In this first novel by Lorraine Campbell the reader is taken up new paths in a gripping conflict, inner and external, between Resistance fighter Valentine de Vaillant (Valli) and the German officer who has been installed in her grandmother's home in Lyon.
The action never flags as the author takes us with unfailing accuracy through the streets of Paris and Lyon, with visits to some exquisite restaurants and nights at the opera, interspersed with Valli's passion for running - a legacy from her two-year stay in Melbourne with her Australian relatives. Maximilian, the German officer, is a gentleman, more like Werner von Ebrennac in Le silence de la mer than the Nazi thugs who were more likely to be found in the Gestapo. Resisting him is as difficult a task as fighting the invader - especially in the shared love of the officer's dog, a Hungarian Vizsla that accompanies Valli on her runs.
In her depiction of character, in her handling of the detail of life at that time and its complicated politics, Lorraine Campbell never takes the reader's attention away from the resolution (or otherwise) of the erotic tension at the centre of this enthralling novel.
This is a book just asking to be made into a film: it has sex, scenery and serious social issues wound around a thrilling story of love in an unwanted time and place.
Dr Bill Murray
(La Trobe University,
Reader in French History)
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