"The French Gift," by Kirsty Manning

Audience: Adult

Genre: Historical Fiction/Mystery

Overall Content Rating: Somewhat Unclean/Unclean

Content Warnings

Crude Language

Mentions of various male & female private parts

Death

Executions (non-graphic)

Beating-to-death (somewhat graphic)

Explicit Sensual/Sex Scenes

Mentions of people being undressed in the presence of others (non-explicit)

A singular instance where a man's body is exposed (explicit)

Multiple mentions of various body parts

An implied mention of sex (non-explicit)

Sometimes successful attempts at rape (mostly non-explicit)

Severe Language

Though it's not used much at all, there are singular usages of the following words:

f-bomb

calling someone a w---e

sh-t

Substance Use

various types of alcohol are consumed recreationally

Overall Review

Having read this for school, I'm certain that my appreciation for some measure of what was written in this novel was dulled somewhat. However, out of all the books I could've chosen for my reading project, I'm glad I chose this one.

Written in times both present and past, this story takes us through the journeys of three women--Joséphine Murant, Margot Bisset, and Genevieve "Evie" Black--and shows how their stories are, interwoven in the most peculiar of ways, even though they seem entirely different on the surface. Starring side characters like Hugo, Evie's son; Clément, the museum curator; and many more wonderful characters, we see the impact that past people can have on the present if only we let their stories have a chance to shine.

I loved reading this book for many reasons. It shows the impact of grief, it shows the brutality of the treatment of those in work camps in WWII, and shows how we can respect those whose stories are left untold, even if they aren't known to the whole world.

The content that is in this book was handled tastefully, which makes the "unclean" label on this book so devastating to me. For the first half of the book, I didn't find anything questionable beyond a few words, but by the end, multiple tiny scenes needed mentioning and made the overall rating much harsher than I believe this book deserved. If you're looking for a book that shows the harshness of the work camps and the people governing them while also providing some present-day reprieve with a tiny bit of romance and mystery, I'd highly suggest this book.

This book spans 1939 - 2004 from the "past" perspectives, and then it continues from roughly 15 years after that to the present day. There are no real dates given and I'm basing this off of what I know from the character's ages, so I could be quite wrong but this is just my rough guesstimate.

I did notice one inconsistency, but that's just something minor. At the beginning of the book, Hugo is said to be eighteen, but at the end of the book, they say he's seventeen. Pretty sure that was just an accident that got missed but just something that I found when reading over my notes. Overall, though, this book was really well-written and engaging and I'd love to read it again when I have the time!