The Fiction Spot
A snapshot review of a book related to the Non-fiction Feature
Also in this Weekly Bulletin:
The Non-fiction Feature: Citizens of London by Lynne Olson
The Product Spot: The National WWII Museum
The Pithy Take
The Lost Vintage begins with Kate Elliott, a sommelier and frantic studier for the notoriously challenging Master of Wine test. She travels back to her French family’s vineyard in a last attempt to learn about Burgundy wine up close—there are magnificent descriptions of wine, with author Ann Mah’s food writing expertise bursting through—and she discovers a hidden cellar of wine, along with books and clothes from an aunt she never knew existed, Helene Marie Charpin, who was a teenager during the Nazi occupation.
Helene, a bright child steeped in treacherous times and duplicitous family members, struggles to survive, while watching everything hopeful around her disintegrate. The Lost Vintage answers questions but asks many more: Is a family’s past indelible? What does it mean to be steward of your family’s land? What do we owe our children, and what sacrifices are worthwhile? Above all, Mah offers an undiluted look into the fearful days before and after Allied liberation, and the choices people, especially women, had to make.
The punishment of these horizontal collaborators—it was absolutely brutal. And not just the head shavings—that was only the beginning. These women were stripped half-naked, smeared with tar, marched around town, kicked and beaten, spat upon. It was complete misogyny…Some of them were forced into liaisons so they could get food or medicine for their children…Women used as scapegoats.
