A Postcard from a Parisian who contains multitudes

My love of French literature in translation may have blossomed back in high school, during the seminal Bonjour Tristesse experience that marks many a young and prolific female reader, but it was in 2016 that I really uncovered a passion for them (don’t judge me if these almost-a-decade-old reccos don’t hold up).

I’ve never tackled one of these books in it’s native tongue (and I’m not sure my conversational French is currently up to the challenge), so it’s hard to say if it’s the book itself or the translator’s talent that makes them tick for me. I’d assume it’s a combination of both. Our friends across the pond favor frank, direct communication in conversation, and this comes across on the page. There is no unnecessary adjective or adverb use. There is no mincing of words. This style is refreshing in most Francophone tales, but can feel confronting when placed in more serious context.

I’ll admit that, as an American, my initial experience of Anne Berest wasn’t as a serious author. In 2014, she, along with style icon Caroline de Maigret and two other friends, published a “guide” called How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits. It was essentially a how-to on nailing the sartorial insouciance, romantic volatility, and yes, slim figure, of a French woman. Naturally, I read it cover-to-cover. That said: it didn’t exactly introduce Berest to the English-speaking world as a literary luminary.

So when my sister-in-law recommended The Postcard, and told me it was by a “chic French woman,” I expected a stylish, bespectacled academic in a crisp white Oxford and a scraped-back bun. But perhaps I hadn’t fully internalized the thesis of How to Be Parisian, which, while unserious on the surface, does drive home the point that French women can be many things at once.

So, tail between my legs, I’m here to say that Anne Berest is a literary luminary—and a chic French woman and a contributor to playful guides on style & aging. Her latest work, La Carte Postale, was published in 2021 in France, where it was a finalist for La Prix Goncourt (which The Perfect Nanny, a book I wrote about years ago, won), the French equivalent to the US’ Pulitzer or the UK’s Booker Prize. Stateside, The Goncourt was recently Americanized, and The Postcard won the inaugural honor.

The Postcard is, in a way, a mélange of the style and subject matter of the last two books I read. Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards was a work of auto-fiction; Berest’s Postcard is a biographical novel. Lilac Girls was about the Holocaust; the Postcard is, too.

Those similarities aside, The Postcard sits head and shoulders above both. It’s complex, sophisticated and confronting. It’s one of the most difficult books I’ve read about the Holocaust but also the most important. And it’s my favorite read of 2024 so far.

The story opens in 2003. Anne Berest’s mother, Lélia, has received a postcard that simply reads: Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie, Jacques—the names of her aunt, uncle, and grandparents—all of whom were killed at Auschwitz. It feels like a threat, one that she doesn’t want to rise to; and she puts it out of her mind for years.

A decade later, Anne is pregnant, and while she’s on bedrest, she asks her mother about the postcard and becomes determined to uncover who sent it, and why.

On her quest to uncover the postcard’s author, Anne dives into her mother’s chaotic but expansive boxes of archived letters, journal entries, and records of her family both during and before the war. Berest uses these archives to piece together the story of her family’s frequent flights from persecution and paints a rich and terrifying portrait of a France under occupation. She also weaves in a personal narrative; her father, like Lélia’s father, is not Jewish, and she didn’t grow up with a strong Jewish identity. But in confronting the truth of her family’s past, she begins to uncover her own sense of religious identity.

It’s a literary tour de force, and—I’ll admit it—I’m inclined to revisit Berest’s advice on style and aging now, too. Writing this and those simply proves that French women really can do it all.