Paulette Mahurin

Although there were several scenes that seemed very unnecessary, I thought the story as a whole was a decent one. The first chapter really sucked me in, but it got a little dry as she went through the details of the dawn of the Nazi regime. Also the abrupt way that the members of her family were "killed off" left many unanswered questions and made the flow of the story a bit choppy. And there seemed to be little emotion from the character at the news of her families deaths except for one brother. As this was a fictional story I would probably not recommend it as a legitimate Holocaust story with much merit as I have others such as Sarah's Key and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.… (meer)

Where the Irises Never Grow is a well-researched book about the Nazi occupation of France, specifically Lyon. It centers around a copy of Aesop's Fables that belonged to a member of the LeGrand family, members of the Resistance who sheltered a young Jewish woman. Atrocities are faithfully recounted as each of the many characters tries to come to grips with escalating violence.
I'm not a fan of the author's style; she 'tells' more than shows with very little dialogue except for short bursts of a character's thinking. It slows the story down and leaves the reader removed from the events in an odd way. It never felt like I actually knew what the characters were going through, unlike Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay which recounts much of the same history and broke my heart.
As I said, it's well-researched, so I learned some things, but I never felt all the disparate pieces fit together into a cohesive whole. The modern-day parts with Monica felt out of place; she's a researcher with free time so why didn't she go to Lyon and talk to the survivors herself? Here, she's just a device for someone else to tell the story, and much of her part of the book I found unnecessary.
It's a fairly quick read, but despite the horrors recounted, seemed somewhat emotionless to me which is odd as books about the Holocaust should bring out all the emotions.… (meer)