Mario Escobar - The Librarian of Saint-Malo

Libraries are being ransacked. France is torn apart by war. A French librarian is determined to resist.
Told through smuggled letters to an author, an ordinary librarian describes the brutal Nazi occupation of her small coastal village and the extraordinary measures she takes to fight back.
Saint-Malo, August 1939. Jocelyn and Antoine are childhood sweethearts, but just after they marry, Antoine is drafted to fight against Germany. As World War II rages, Jocelyn uses her position as a librarian in her town of Saint-Malo to comfort and encourage her community with books. Jocelyn begins to write secret letters smuggled to a famous Parisian author, telling her story in the hope that it will someday reach the outside world.
France falls and the Nazis occupy Jocelyn's town, turning it into a fortress. The townspeople try passive resistance, but the German commander ruthlessly begins to destroy part of the city's libraries. Books deemed unsuitable by the Nazis are burnt or stolen, and priceless knowledge is lost.
Risking arrest and even her life, Jocelyn manages to hide some of the books while desperately waiting to receive news from her husband Antoine, now a prisoner in a German camp.
Jocelyn's mission unfolds in her to protect the people of Saint-Malo and the books they hold so dear.

Comment: I got this book at the library the last time I went there; I am not familiar with the author and had no reason for picking it up except the fact it had the word librarian on the cover.

When the second world war begins, many citizens in France never imagined things would escalate so terribly and in the coastal city of St Malo, news from the east seemed too far, until the day the German troops arrived. Jocelyn is the city's librarian and she is aware there are some rare books which should be protected, but soon things become very dire for everyone, and even more so when the French men need to be recruited for the war. When the Germans arrive and take over the city, some order people to let them stay at their houses and the officer staying at hers is out of her worst expectations. Although other officers aren't as violent, things never get easier... will Jocelyn see her husband again? Will she save the books as she feels is her duty?

One would think that any story on books or librarians or saving books would always be amazing, isn't it? Sadly, that wasn't the case here and while I had not been familiar with the author's work, I cannot say I feel I'll look for other things by him now. This wasn't such a great story, no, and now that I've been thinking about it to write a few sentences here, the more I feel I need to downgrade my original grade from 3 stars at GR to 2, thus lowering it here as well.

The author is an historian and has written many articles, but when it comes to combine fiction with historical facts, from this example, I would say he does focus a lot more on what is fact and not exactly in making the fictional part as appealing or as well meshed with what was real. This doesn't have to be bad, but then, that is why articles and historical publications can be great too. As for fiction, there are things that need to be done well enough to make the reading experience interesting and here I felt the characters weren't that well fleshed and the writing style was not fluid nor riveting.

Portuguese cover

The main story about Jocelyn being the librarian and wanting to save the books was, as expected, mentioned many times but there weren't that many scenes of her working at the library, actually. The whole "rare books" importance, mainly for the plot, was fine and certainly based on real life events, which is fine, but I admit didn't captivate me as much as it would if other things had happened too, about the everyday life at the library. There are several references to authors and to some books here and there, but I felt this was mostly done so that the true horror of destroying books during war times felt even more devastating.

It cannot be avoided that the setting up during WWII would be a element impossible to ignore. Of course the occupation of the city would be key to certain situations, and there are one or two things that might seem too radical to readers (such as the fact Jocelyn supposedly starts caring for a German officer who helps her in a complicated situation). A lot could be said and discussed about certain content situations/scenes, but I will say that while the things that felt "ickier" were probably rightfully so, had the writing been better, perhaps those elements would not have been as divided.

To me, the bottom line here is how things were written. I suppose I can imagine what the

author's intention was with certain plot choices, but it did make the fictional part...unpleasant to read. It also didn't help that the chapters jumped from date to date, sometimes with months in between, and we are told how things are in a dispassionate tone, so the emotion needs to be gotten from what is written alone (I felt), and this makes the story too distanced from the reader. I created no real empathy towards Jocelyn nor to the other secondary characters, as so often happens in books like these, where characters do thinks because it's the right thing to do, even in the midst of danger and unfairness.

Since this was based on real life events, the end was to be expected as well... again, the way things are written is just... I think the author could have done a better job fictionalizing this. Or, perhaps,a better homage would have been to simply write a non fiction book on the real Jocelyn and on what happened in St Malo. 

Grade: 4/10