Hell Before Breakfast by Robert H Patton

 
Amazon
Goodreads

The Gilded Age. A time of advancing technology that gave rise to the modern world we know. Thanks to the creation of the electric telegraph and the transatlantic cable, for the first time it was possible for foreign correspondents to share their dispatches with the general public days and sometimes even hours after the events. Out of this came the first war correspondents, Americans sent to cover twenty years of conflict in Europe and Central Asia. Pushed by bitter competition but brought together by a brotherhood born of common experience, these men drove public opinion and fuelled passions that would not come to rest until World War I. Hell Before Breakfast tells their story, through the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the Russian conflicts in Central Asia and through to the sinking of the Titanic.

I have a thing about history books set in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, so Hell Before Breakfast was right up my alley. As such it jumped out at me from the Amazon Monthly Editors’ Choices and went straight on to my TBR list as a book I was definitely looking forward to getting to. In the end, the book was an enjoyable read, though not as much as I had been expecting. After all, a non-fiction book dealing with journalism at a time when the profession was truly a cut-throat one, could only be exciting, right? Well, yes and no. While the book has its moments, especially when the correspondents become directly involved in battles, there is also a lack of flow in the narrative – you sometimes get the feeling that the book would have worked better with a different chapter concentrating on each correspondent or newspaper, rather than on a simple linear story. The journalists themselves, though, are truly the stars of the book: every single one of them comes across as a real character, complete with extravagant foibles and – for some of them – extremely dramatic lives (and deaths!). The theme that remains omnipresent throughout is the fact that these men were responsible for providing us with an important glimpse of the world of the time, putting everything on the line in order to do so. Overall, I enjoyed Hell Before Breakfast, though I can see ways in which it could have been improved. 

I gave Hell Before Breakfast 3 stars.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose

Amazon

Goodreads

Paris, the 1920s. A place of excitement, dissolution and liberty. A place of ambitions, passions, art in every form, where the discontented of the world over come to find freedom. In the centre of this world lies the Chameleon Club, where expats, artists and libertines rub shoulders with extraordinary athletes, journalists and cross dressers. Into this world come a group of people whose lives will come together for a time before breaking apart in the horror of the Second World War. Centered on Lou Villars, a former runner and racecar driver who becomes a Nazi interrogator, these sometimes lovers, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies see their fortunes rise and fall. From the Hungarian photographer Gabor Tsenyi, to the America writer Lionel Maine, these characters live and breathe through the heights of the 20s, the despairs of the 30s and the darkness of the Occupation.

Told through a kaleidoscope of voices – letters, diaries, memoirs and a non-fiction work – Lovers at the Chameleon Club is a truly epic work, providing a sweeping vision of a city and a world that came to an end in the fires of the Second World War. While the plot comes to revolve around the character of Lou Villars, who begins her life as an athlete before becoming a racecar driver, a mechanic, a spy and finally a torturer, all of the characters have their own stories and lives. Showing the effect that one person can have on so many lives, Lovers at the Chameleon Club also deals with the unreliability of narrators, as each and every one is shown at some point to have exaggerated, hidden or even outright lied about the truth. Where the book truly excels, though, is in the creation of the Paris of the 20s and 30s, and especially the portrayal of the Chameleon Club itself. Prose does a fantastic job of describing this world on the cusp of such brutal change. She also manages to give each narrator their own individual voice, passing the story from one to the other with aplomb. Though far from being an action-packed thriller, the pages turn by themselves, and I got to the end of it before I had realized it. With a surprise twist in the final chapter, which puts everything else into a new light, the novel is a triumphant depiction of an intriguing period of history, told through the eyes of some fantastically drawn characters. 

I gave Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 4,5 stars.