Great read
The Riviera House Natasha Lester, by Hachette
There’s an aching inevitability to author Natasha Lester’s densely plotted new novel that leaves you almost as breathless as its colourful tapestry of lead characters. Early on we suspect that our heroine, Éliane Dufort, is not going to make it, but we so want her to and hang on every twist hoping she can come through – life, love, family intact.
It’s 1939 and as the Nazis cut a swathe through Europe, France battles on, praying Hitler won’t invade. In Paris Éliane works at the Louvre, where she also attends art classes. She is the eldest sister in a large family in which she also fulfils a matriarchal role for her worn-out mother but dearly longs to be an artist like her brother, Luc. Then she meets Luc’s friend, artist Xavier, and a slow-burn romance begins, set against the outbreak of war. When the Nazis enter Paris it’s not just the people who they round up but the world’s most prized artworks, both from the galleries and also rich Jewish collectors. This prompts Éliane to put her life on the line with the French Resistance to save the art she loves from Hitler’s clutches.
Cut to 2015 and a glorious house on the French Riviera where model turned vintage fashion retailer Remy is shooting the catalogue for her latest online collection. But pounding in the background of Remy’s glamorous life is a tragic past. What does this have to do with Éliane and the Louvre? Quite a lot actually, as these two tales interweave.
While Éliane and Remy are entirely fictitious characters,
The Riviera House draws inspiration from real events and some real people. “I love to uncover and bring to life the stories of brave women who’ve been forgotten by history, and Rose Valland, a courageous art spy in WWII Paris, is one of the characters in this novel,” explains Natasha. To research the book she travelled to Paris and stayed in a house on the French Riviera that was formerly inhabited by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – “so I could really get into the spirit of Riviera life!” Natasha adds.
“The book opens with the Mona Lisa and all the other treasures from the Louvre being sent to the countryside to be hidden from the Germans, which really happened – the Mona Lisa travelled in a red velvet-lined case marked with a secret code. Rose worked at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris where the Nazis stored tens of thousands of artworks that they stole from Jewish families – it was the most colossal and systematic theft of artworks in human history.”
That story is cleverly amplified in Natasha’s heart-racing tale, which also pulses with two very heady love matches.