Having only recently finished Jojo Moye’s beautiful but weepy “Me Before You”, I was at first uncertain as to whether “The Girl You Left Behind” would be able to match it. My copy from Real Readers arrived on my doorstep though, and I was instantly drawn in by the story. Needless to say, I shouldn’t have worried and that her latest novel is just as fascinating and compelling, if not possibly better.
The book starts off in France, during the First World War. The village of St Peronne has been taken over by German soldiers and its residents forced to starve away in their homes, not knowing what’s happening even in the next village. Sophie Lefevre has moved back to the village with her sister and her sister’s three children, and together they are trying to keep themselves alive. Sophie’s husband is a painter and her prized possession is a portrait of her, that she keeps to remind her of him whilst he fights at the front. The German Kommandant in charge of the occupying forces sees the painting and tries to become friends with Sophie despite the war. When she gets news that her husband has been captured, Sophie fears that she will never see him again, and makes a decision to try and save him whatever it may take.
Fast forward to modern days and Liv Halston is living inside the house her architect husband build and designed, before he died four years ago. Liv is still grieving for him and her most precious possession and reminder of him is the painting that hangs on her bedroom wall, “The girl you left behind”.
Enter Paul, an ex cop from America. He works for a company that specialises in tracking down art works that had been stolen from families in the two world wars. He receives a request from a member of the Lefevre family, asking for his help in finding a painting which went missing after Sophie Lefevre was taken away by the Germans in 1916 and is believed to have been stolen by the German Kommandant.
The twists and turns of this novel had me reading far later into the night than I should have been, but I just didn’t want to put it down. It didn’t take long for me to become emotionally involved with the characters. Sophie’s world is dark and bleak and the suffering in the village is described so realistically, it was hard not to imagine the sound of soldier’s boots on cobbled stones. Sophie is full of life, and love for her husband, and it’s understandable she finds herself in a situation where she believes there is nothing else to do but to try and save him. When the book moves forward to modern times, the reader is still none the wiser as to the painting’s final resting place. This means that as the reader, I found out about Sophie’s ending, at the same time as Liv did. And despite a large amount of predictability in the earlier parts of the book, I was not expecting the ending I did. The whole novel was paced just right, with the story leaping about in time without it being too onerous or confusing. Letters and journals helped add to Sophie’s voice in the 21st century.
Liv has to make a difficult choice as well, for her, she wants to fight for a painting she believes is hers. It opens up an interesting debate about the restoration of lost pieces of art work, and cleverly blurs the line of right and wrong. After all, Liv and her husband did not steal the painting, so why should she be punished? Yet again I feel Jojo Moyes cleverly takes a subject matter and presents it in such a way you can see all sides of the story, and leaves you feeling completely absorbed by the plot.
Overall, this is another brilliant and excellent piece of writing from an author who has very quickly become one of my favourites. The only down side, is I am now getting through too many tissues when reading her books!
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