Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 (Prose) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 is a novel of great reach and power, a portrait of an entire era. Prose's canvas is crowded with many characters, but they’re all well-delineated. She has a miraculous gift for imagining a foggy quay or a smoky cabaret—or a strait-laced banquet given by the Führer, eating his vegetarian nut cutlets while his guests tremble with fear. Though there are multiple narrators, each is distinct, since Prose has a knack for parodying different voices.
Edmund White - New York Times Book Review


Prose’s 21st novel captures the brilliance of Paris’s bohemian art scene in the ’20s and ’30s, as well as the dark days that followed.... The novel skillfully portrays the headiness of Parisian cafes, where artists and writers came together to talk and cadge free drinks, and the terror of the Nazi Occupation. Though the momentum lags at times, Prose deftly demonstrates with a wink the self-seeking nature of memory and the way we portray our past.
Publishers Weekly


What's most striking about this latest work from Prose is how effectively she weaves together the stories of more than a half dozen characters to tell the larger picture of France (and, indeed, Europe) between the World Wars while reflecting on the nature of evil and the limits of biography (and biographical fiction).... At first a smoothly unrolling tapestry, the novel deepens as it portrays a society careening toward war.  —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Artistically and intellectually adventurous, Prose presents a house-of-mirrors historical novel built around a famous photograph by Brassai of two women at a table in a Paris nightclub. The one wearing a tuxedo is athlete, race-car driver, and Nazi collaborator Violette Morris.... Prose considered writing a biography, but instead she forged an electrifying union of fact and fiction.... A dark and glorious tour de force. —Donna Seaman
Booklist


(Starred review.) A tour de force of character, point of view and especially atmosphere, Prose's latest takes place in Paris from the late 1920s till the end of World War II. The primary locus of action is the Chameleon Club, a cabaret where entertainment edges toward the kinky.... Within this multilayered web of characters, Prose manages to give almost every character a voice.... Brilliant and dazzling Prose.
Kirkus Reviews