Never Anyone But You
Ratings5
Average rating3.4
In the years preceding World War I, two young women meet, by chance, in a provincial town in France. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy seventeen-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As "sisters" they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature, and politics blend in an explosive cocktail. Having reinvented themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, they move in the most glamorous social circles, meeting everyone from Hemingway and Dalí to André Breton, and produce provocative photographs that still seem avant-garde today. In the 1930s, with the rise of anti-Semitism and threat of fascism, they leave Paris for Jersey, and it is on this idyllic island that they confront their destiny, creating a campaign of propaganda against Hitler's occupying forces that will put their lives in jeopardy.
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A novel based on the real lives of French surrealists and lovers Lucie Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who defied conventions and gender and recreated themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. We follow their lives from their first meeting and immediate attraction in adolescence, to the art scene Paris - including encounters with Salvador Dali and Andre Breton, and all the other surrealists I am ignorant of - to their resistance movement and subsequent incarceration during WWII, up until their last days. Their life is challenging, occasionally dark, but their bond is strong and never really in question. I enjoyed the unafraid intimacy and openness they shared, and I liked that the book stayed with them until old age.
What I'd like now, is a website that shows all the original photographs they took, and that Thomson wove into the narrative.
I enjoyed it, but I was never really swept up in it. Apart from Suzanne's touching quiet last years maybe. Therefore 3.5
