It’s such a pleasure today to share my review of The Paris Notebook by Tessa Harris – published by HQ Digital on 15th February, it’s now available as an ebook on all major platforms and as an audiobook, with the paperback to follow on 13th April. My apologies that it’s taken me rather longer than I intended to write a review – the e-copy I read was my own, purchased (pre-ordered, because I was rather excited about this one!) via Amazon.
It’s always been a pleasure to welcome Tessa as my guest here on Being Anne – never more so than when she joined me to share the fascinating story behind her first book for HQ, Beneath a Starless Sky (you’ll find that post here). If it’s one you haven’t yet read, I’d recommend it really highly – a sweeping wartime story quite wonderfully told, a superb blend of fiction and fact, filled with drama and intrigue (you’ll find my review here). And then came The Light We Left Behind – there’s a romantic thread, some immensely intriguing wartime secret history, and the developing mystery, all perfectly balanced and with storytelling of the highest order (here‘s my review). And when I saw the highly original premise for her latest book, I just couldn’t wait to dive in…
A secret big enough to destroy the Führer’s reputation. . .
January 1939:
When Katja Heinz secures a job as a typist at Doctor Viktor’s clinic, she doesn’t expect to be copying top secret medical records from a notebook.
At the end of the first world war, Doctor Viktor treated soldiers for psychological disorders. One of the patients was none other than Adolf Hitler…
The notes in his possession declare Hitler unfit for office – a secret that could destroy the Führer’s reputation, and change the course of the war if exposed…
With the notebook hidden in her hat box, Katja and Doctor Viktor travel to Paris. Seeking refuge in the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, they hope to find a publisher brave enough to print the controversial script.
But Katja is being watched. Nazi spies in Paris have discovered her plan. They will stop at nothing to destroy the notebook and silence those who know of the secret hidden inside…
There are times when I think I might be growing tired of wartime stories – and then a book like this one comes along, beautifully written and with such stunning originality, and I wonder what on earth why on earth I ever thought that. A piece of fiction, but built around a kernel of truth, with real events, characters and locations – the author’s afterword is almost as fascinating as the book itself – with an added layer of “what if” that made it a totally compelling story.
In 1939 Hamburg, with the Nazi threat becoming ever more evident, Katja – struggling with the care of her frail mother, and her own grief over the death of her activist father in the early book burnings – unexpectedly secures a job as personal assistant to psychiatrist Doctor Viktor. Entrusted with the transcription of a notebook, she slowly realises that the clinical notes she’s working on have an immense importance – the doctor treated Adolf Hitler following a gas attack in WW1, and they hold major secrets about his mental health that, if shared, could have a considerable value in changing the course of history. She travels with the doctor to Paris, in an attempt to get the notes published – and, as an avid book lover, finds herself in Shakespeare and Company, where she meets Daniel. He’s a newspaper journalist, struggling with the recent loss of his wife and child, drinking too much – but, as Katja’s world falls apart, might just offer her the support she needs to achieve her aim of getting the notebook and its important information into allied hands and into the public domain.
Katja is a quite wonderful heroine – young and at first naive, but with a developing steely determination to achieve her objective, showing exceptional bravery in the furtherance of the mission she really believes in. And I entirely believed in her, willing her on at every turn and through every heartbreaking setback. The world the author builds around her is wonderfully researched and recreated, and searingly real – the well-drawn individuals who stand in her way and work against her, the support she finds when her task seems impossible, the increase of Nazi oppression in Hamburg itself and the approaching threat of invasion when in Paris. The writing is just wonderful – after a necessarily steady start to introduce the characters and their context, the tension and pace really ramp up together with that feeling of suspense and mounting danger that made the book quite impossible to set aside. There’s a lot of exceptionally well-developed drama, but there’s a relationship story in here too – an all-consuming love story that had the perfect emotional touch, very real and particularly engaging, between two characters who already held my heart in their hands.
This book really was quite exceptional in so many ways – without question one of my books of the year, with an unforgettable impact, and I recommend it really highly.
About the author
Tessa Harris read History at Oxford University and has been a journalist, writing for several national newspapers and magazines for more than thirty years. She is the author of nine published historical novels. Her debut, The Anatomist’s Apprentice, won the Romantic Times First Best Mystery Award 2012 in the US. She lectures in creative writing at Hawkwood College, Stroud and is married with two children. She lives in the Cotswolds.
