The Kites/Romain Cary
Very often a fictional account can be more gripping than factual historical one and this is certainly the case with Romain Cary’s story of Ludo Fleury, a young man growing up in Normandy during the last war. Both his parents perished in World War One and he is brought up by his uncle a builder of kites. Ludo falls in love with Lila Broznicki. Her father a wealthy gambler of Polish aristocratic descent has a grand house in the locality. They move back to Poland which is swiftly occupied by the Nazis. Ludo works for the local resistance, his prodigious memory is of great use in retaining in it code names. Eventually he is reunited with Lila. The novel therefore covers and conveys the whole sweep of occupied France.
The less central characters are more engaging. One is Jacqueline, a streetwise Jewish Madame of bordellos, who is always one step ahead of the game. Realising before almost everybody else that France would fall she set up the first basis of a resistance network recruiting Luso. She reinvents herself as Countess Esterhazy after the occupation and extracts invaluable information from the Nazi high command. Another intriguing character is Marcellin Duprat, proprietor of the Clos Jolie a high class restaurant. He has no problem serving Les Boches whilst his compatriots are starving. With men like these you can see why France fell so quickly. You also feel the total lack of the type of inspirational leadership Winston Churchill supplied though you could see him as a willing diner at the restaurant.
The translation from French is slightly clunky. Cote d’Azur is translated as azure coast, not riviera, for example.
The opening section set in the build up to the invasion of a France is slow but the narration supported by his love of Lila and the activities of the resistance gathers pace. Many Frenchmen worked both sides of the street but at the last moment bailed out their Nazi support to join the resistance which is how it earned its 32nd August sobriquet.
These late arrivals were amongst the most vicious in dealing with so called traitors. The Milice, the Vicky Police headed by Pierre Laval were steadfast and ruthless in serving their Nazi lords and masters. It was a shabby time in France’s history, well reflected in this gripping novel.