“A marvel of lost innocence” (O, The Oprah Magazine) that reimagines three life-changing weeks poet Elizabeth Bishop spent in Paris amidst the imminent threat of World War II. June 1937. Elizabeth Bishop, still only a young woman and not yet one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, arrives in France with her college roommates. They are in search of an escape, and inspiration, far … escape, and inspiration, far from the protective world of Vassar College where they were expected to find an impressive husband and a quiet life. But the world is changing, and as they explore the City of Lights, the larger threats of fascism and occupation are looming. There, they meet a community of upper-crust expatriates who not only bring them along on a life-changing adventure, but also into an underground world of rebellion that will quietly alter the course of Elizabeth’s life forever.
Sweeping and stirring, Paris, 7 A.M. imagines 1937–the only year Elizabeth, a meticulous keeper of journals–didn’t fully chronicle–in vivid detail and brings us from Paris to Normandy where Elizabeth becomes involved with a group rescuing Jewish “orphans” and delivering them to convents where they will be baptized as Catholics and saved from the impending horror their parents will face.
Both poignant and captivating, Paris, 7 A.M. is an “achingly introspective marvel of lost innocence” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and a beautifully rendered take on the formative years of one of America’s most celebrated female poets.
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Serendipity
On Monday, April 15, Notre-Dame was in flames.
A horrified world watched, joined in tears.
***
On Tuesday, April 16, during my husband’s surgery,
I was in a waiting room
reading Liz Wieland’s Paris, 7 A.M.
And I read, “The crazy quilt of languages around Notre-Dame,”
and I read, “The being that will appear will emerge from the guest bedroom
will be hideous, a sort of gargoyle
come down off the sheer facade of Notre-Dame,”
and I read, “In an hour, it’s lighting a candle in Notre-Dame,”
and I read, “the great squatting hulk of Notre-Dame,”
while the television in the waiting room aired
photographs and videos of the “great squatting hulk”,
the gleam of the cross rising out of the ashes like a beacon.
I have never seen Notre-Dame or Paris or France.
I have not had the luck to have been a traveler.
No memories rushed forward, just sorrow for what was lost.
But the book brought Paris alive for me,
albeit a Paris from long before my birth,
a Paris just before the war,
with intimations of war
quivering in the atmosphere.
The Novel
Geography
In 1937, the young poet Elizabeth Bishop and two Vassar friends
traveled to Paris.
For three weeks, Elizabeth did not write in her journal.
Liz Wieland wondered about that silence
and imagined Bishop’s life over those missing weeks,
the mysteries she held close and never revealed.
Elizabeth and her friends,
full of youthful optimism
in spite of the disorder on the continent.
Louise of the blue eyes.
Anaphora. Margaret’s horrid accident.
And the people they meet,
Sigrid who married for safety,
and the Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun
who sees in Elizabeth her deceased daughter
who sees in Elizabeth a co-conspirator.
Paris 7 A.M. reflects Bishop’s poetic voice, steals her imagery
and the titles of her books of poetry, Easter eggs
left to find in the days before Easter when I was reading.
So many hidden in the paragraphs beyond my ken.
“And then the clocks speak,” I read.
The clocks, the time, the water, sailing,
the drinking, the women,
the traveling, and the traveling.
“Why do you travel?” I read. Questions of Travel.
And she answers, “To be free.” “To see beauty.”
It was coming, people sensed, knew
the world would shift again, war inevitable.
“The world is getting so ugly,” I read.
“The swastika, a headless spider,” I read.
The Jewish babies lovingly handed over
by desperate loving mothers
to traveling into stranger’s arms
to travel into another mother’s arms.
Elizabeth’s mother could not mother
Elizabeth would never become a mother
Elizabeth was a midwife in the babies rebirth.
Elsewhere
Back to the known, Wieland’s pen
flirts across the years
touching like a butterfly on a flower
upon Bishop’s travels.
Florida. Brazil. America.
Letters from Marianne Moore, Sigrid, Louise.
Sailing with ‘Cal’ Lowell.
A summation of a life’s losses.
And I read,
“Does everybody live such divided lives, Elizabeth wonders: one self moving about the world like all the other million selves, and another that’s stuck somewhere behind?”
I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
I do like reading books about the WWII, and this one did sound very interesting so I was looking forward to reading what I thought would be an engrossing novel. Though the background and timeline of this novel are well-researched, the characters lack depth and the writing style threw me off. The story did not engage me.
I was excited to read Paris 7 A.M. by Liza Wieland. My choice of genre is WWII historical fiction. I liked the synopsis that this was a story of a missing time period of Elizabeth Bishop’s journal. The author made up this part of the journal about Elizabeth’s time in Paris in 1937. Elizabeth helped rescue Jewish orphans and deliver them to a convent to be baptized. Unfortunately, this synopsis is misleading. Touch of the novel is about Elizabeth’s life growing up and her time at Vasser. The author doesn’t write about the time period in the synopsis until near the half-way point. Then, too much time was spent after the missing time period in the journal about her later life. The book just did not work for me.
Thank you NetGalley and Simon Schuster for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
The life of extraordinary poet Elizabeth Bishop is a more than challenging subject for fiction, but Liza Wieland, in this rendering, captures a sensibility that is believable as Bishop’s, complete with its sometimes acerbic lucidity, its wit, and crystalline precision of mind. Paris, 7 a.m. stands with works like Colm Toibin’s The Master in its startlingly credible rendition of the inner life of a great artist of our time.
Paris, 7A.M. by Liza Wieland is my introduction to this author. I had high hopes that this would be a book for me but unfortunately it was not. I had a hard time with the way the author skipped around it made it very hard for me to follow. I had a hard time trying to figure out who was speaking. I felt that the last half of the book was very rushed. I can’t say this book was bad it just wasn’t for me. Thank you NetGalley and Simon Schuster for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.