The Paris Understudy
Thiele has written a powerful, suspenseful debut novel. We first meet tall, blonde Yvonne Chevallier as a contestant at the National Conservatory of Music in 1936 Paris, singing diva Madeleine Moreau’s signature solo better than she. “Yvonne’s voice rose in the hall and wrapped itself around them like a spell. She lived for moments like these… when she shared her gift with the world.” Madeleine being a judge, our heroine loses. She buries the soprano as her understudy.
In 1939, with war looming, the legendary Madeleine is invited to headline the Bayreuth Festival in Bavaria, a Nazi stronghold. When Madeleine fakes artistic differences with the conductor, Yvonne sings in her place to standing ovations, meets handsome officer Hans Hermann, and is photographed with Hitler, a photo that comes to haunt her. During the Occupation, they meet again, and Hans uses his considerable influence to secure top roles for Yvonne at Opera Garnier. The tension and rivalry between the two women intensify.
When Yvonne’s idealistic teenage son, Jules, is taken, as part of the Jewish roundup to the Velodrome d’Hiver, Yvonne invokes her star power at Gestapo headquarters, succumbs to Klaus Koegel’s humiliation and assault and is coerced into being his mistress to free her son from the concentration camps. She sees no other way. The reader is kept on the edge of her seat as Yvonne walks on eggshells around the sadist Gestapo commander who interrogates and tortures prisoners, and burns cigarettes into her arms on the slightest provocation. I’m reminded of Karen Robards’ novel, The Black Swan of Paris, an equally gripping novel as dazzling French chanteuse Genevieve Dumont’s access to high-level Nazis lead to her spying behind enemy lines. Deemed a collaborator, she’s only trying to survive. What will the liberation of Paris bring?
