Review by New York Times Review
THE BASIC FACTS of the lives of Claude Cahun (nee Lucie Schwob) and Marcel Moore (nee Suzanne Malherbe) offer enough material for any number of novels. They met as teenagers in France in 1909 and fell in love. They hid the affair, of course, but fortunately for them Schwob's divorced father married Suzanne's widowed mother in 1917, making them stepsisters. After moving to Paris, the pair began their lives together deep in the Surrealist milieu. Separately and together, they produced a great deal of art - collages, theater pieces, poetry, prose, photographs and sculpture. Perhaps Cahun's most famous work is an extensive series of photographed self-portraits as various identities, morphing from androgyne to Pierrot to angel with wings to bodybuilder. They are still astonishing. In some, Cahun looks like a marine; in others, a strange doll; in still others, a two-headed being, with both heads bald. It isn't hard to understand why David Bowie curated an exhibit of Cahun's work in 2007, Cahun being one who fell to earth long before Ziggy Stardust was even imagined. During World War II, Cahun and Moore lived in Jersey, which was under German occupation. They created and distributed a series of anti-Nazi fliers, for which they were arrested, jailed and condemned to death. Liberated before the sentence could be carried out, they remained together until Cahun died in 1954. Moore committed suicide in 1972. One can hardly glance at these facts without wondering so many things. Not least is how they had the courage to do what they did, all their lives, and what it was like to be them, together, over all those decades, in all those rooms, jail cells, salons and studios. Plus being, legally, sisters. And did I mention that Cahun was Jewish? There's so much sheer moxie, prismatic identity, pleasure and danger in these lives that a novelist might have trouble deciding what angle to choose. The fact that Rupert Thomson has centered "Never Anyone But You," his novel about the pair, on that 40-plus-year relationship suggests that his imagination was fired by a queer intimacy that spanned two world wars and was intertwined with a highly original, often collaborative Surrealist artistic practice in which identities were fluid and everchanging. This turns out to be a false assumption. Thomson, the author of 10 previous novels, many of them either thrillers or incorporating the elements of thrillers, doesn't appear to be much interested in those aspects of Cahun and Moore. He isn't obliged to be, of course, although one might well wonder why so much rich raw material has been left on the table - or signal that Cahun and Moore's relationship is at the heart of this novelistic transformation of history when it isn't. Thomson offers, instead, two well brought-up young ladies who say things like "What's gender, anyway?" and deliver explanations of the Dreyfus affair, Surrealism ("the Surrealists used automatic writing and trancelike states to unearth truths hidden in language and in themselves"), sexist attitudes toward women and madness, Andre Breton's many feuds with his fellow Surrealists and other encyclopedic facts. Famous artists are always attending the novel's parties and gatherings, and are duly described. There is an episode of Claude's with a man named Bob - perhaps an affair, perhaps not - and much is made of Bob, who reappears either in the flesh or as a topic of discussion. Claude attempts suicide on a fairly regular basis, but this is never explored, nor does Marcel dwell on it overmuch. The novel is narrated from Marcel's point of view, but Marcel is at best a lens, an eyewitness to history, a stoic nursemaid and a reliable guide. Of Claude, her partner in life and art, she says, "like the Surrealists," she "believed dreams had a way of throwing light on the fundamental questions of our daily lives." To whom would she be addressing this observation? Late in her relationship with Claude, she observes that "sometimes the person you're closest to is the one you understand the least." True enough. Thomson's engagement with Cahun's work is slight, and his engagement with Moore's nearly nonexistent. Cahun is gifted and troubled, in a very distant way, and Moore pretty much abides by the conventions attached to the wife of a powerful artist: helpmeet, reasonable intermediary, survivor, emotional caretaker. At this point in the review, the reader might well wonder, as I did, what part of this story did, perhaps, inspire Thomson. On the evidence, it's the war and the acts of resistance that nearly got Cahun and Moore killed that bring his best writing to the fore. Once Cahun and Moore are arrested by the Gestapo, the narrative comes alive; the scenes are tense, particular and embodied. In an otherwise chaste depiction of two people who risked everything to be together, for example, finally we get a specific, vivid kiss in which Claude's tongue "tasted of zinc or iron ... panic's residue." The interrogation scenes are wonderfully peculiar; the interrogators can't believe that these two - both in their 50s - could have acted alone. "Two old women like you?" says one, incredulous. Clearly, they've never met "two old women" like these, and have no idea what to make of them. Are they sisters, are they Jews, are they mad? What are all those weird photographs, women naked and with shaved heads, in their house? Confused and enraged, the Nazi judge sentences them to death. It is here, at the most unbelievable point in their story, that Thomson writes his most believable scenes. The panic that animated that kiss pressurizes this section, in which a kind of black comedy alternates with existential dread. Here, when Dali arrives, he is not a walk-on historical figure, but a fantasy of Marcel's. The grand, theatrical Surrealist hosts them at a magical fisherman's shack where she and Claude never did visit him in real life. Now, though, in captivity, she visits that shack with its swans and its feasts, its lovemaking, its art that never existed, over and over. I had to read this passage twice to understand that it didn't happen, so pungent is it, brought to pulsing life by isolation and proximity to death. There are so many fascinating mysteries about Cahun and Moore, and one of these has to do with duration - long lives as lovers and artists, always producing and expressing - but duration doesn't appear to ignite Thomson's imagination as much as the ticking clock of survival under great pressure. While one can hardly blame him for his preferences, one might wonder why he chose to address the rather extraordinary entire arc of lives in which he was only truly interested in one tense episode. The sisters' lives tire filled with 'so much sheer moxie, prismatic identity, pleasure and danger.' STACY D'ERASMO'S most recent books are "The Art of Intimacy" and a novel, "Wonderland."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Thomson's (Katherine Carlyle, 2015) latest is based on the real-life relationship between illustrator, designer, and photographer Suzanne Malherbe and the half-Jewish writer and photographer Lucie Schwob, who changed their names to Marcel Moore and Claude Cahun, respectively. They met before the start of the Great War in a small French town. Privately they become lovers, but to the outside world they are sisters. They move to Paris, where they befriend some of the biggest names of the era, including Apollinaire, André Breton, and Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, proprietors of the famous bookshop Shakespeare and Company. But Thomson has more on his mind than mere name-dropping as the novel turns darker and takes place over many decades. The women move to the island of Jersey, the Nazis assume power in Europe and soon occupy their adopted home, and they are imprisoned for anti-Nazi propaganda. Readers enamored of Paris in its artistic and literary heyday and curious about overlooked historical women and members of the LGBT community will be moved by Thomson's lovely, quietly powerful novel of reinvention in many forms.--Sawyers, June Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The evocative latest from Thomson (Katherine Carlyle) follows two unsung female French World War II heroes and traces their lives from their teen years to their deaths. The book's narrator, Suzanne Malherbe, almost 17, meets the charismatic and mature 14-year-old Lucie Schwob in their hometown of Nantes in 1909; they bond immediately and become lovers after a few years. Lucie, a free spirit, reinvents herself as Claude Courlis (later Cahun), and Suzanne follows suit, calling herself Marcel Moore, both reasoning that the male names better suit their independent identities. In Paris in the 1920s and '30s the two (Suzanne a photographer and illustrator, Lucie a writer and model for Suzanne) hobnob with Surrealist artists and writers and later move to the British island of Jersey off the Normandy coast, where they create a clandestine anti-Nazi propaganda campaign during the German occupation. The push and pull between the rock-steady Suzanne and the more volatile and sensitive Lucie is a constant undercurrent, but the strength of their relationship is never more powerful than during their face-off with the Nazis and their subsequent survival. In this seamless and comprehensive tale, Thompson shines a light on two impressive and memorable life stories. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
On the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands, two women stand in their garden worrying about the future and contemplating their past. From the moment that Lucie and Suzanne lay eyes on each other in 1909, they form a fierce attachment. Although they are regarded by their small village as eccentrics, affecting mannish clothing and adopting new masculine names (Claude and Marcel), they fit right into the Bohemian Paris of the 1920s. In literary salons and gatherings, they join a group of Surrealists and mingle with artists and writers like Dalí, Miro, and -Hemingway. When fascism begins its spread across Europe, the women decamp to the isle of Jersey, where they purchase a seaside villa and befriend the locals. Once the Nazis arrive, however, the women bravely undertake a dangerous propaganda campaign aimed at undermining the German cause. VERDICT With a dash of Midnight in Paris and a hint of Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer's The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, this part love story, part thriller is sure to captivate.- Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An intense clandestine love affair between two Frenchwomen during the first half of the 20th century spans art and literature, war and imprisonment, madness and devotion.In his 10th novel, British writer Thomson (Katherine Carlyle, 2015, etc.) traces the intertwined biographies of two historical challengers of convention: Suzanne Malherbe, aka Marcel Moore, and Lucie Schwob, aka Claude Cahun. Their teenage attraction, which blossomed into adult love, was shielded by the fact that Suzanne's widowed mother and Lucie's divorced father fell in love and married, transforming the women into stepsisters. The daughter of a schizophrenic mother, Claude is impulsive and volatile, anorexic, sometimes suicidal, a cross-dresser who explores creativity in various forms, including acting and writing. Marcel, an illustrator and photographer, is the more grounded, less wayward of the two. After growing up in Nantes, the two women move to Paris in 1920, where they mingle with Dadaists, surrealists, and the avant-garde. Dal makes an appearance, as do Hemingway, Andr Breton, and others. A sequence of holidays spent in the Channel Isles leads to a decision to move there in 1937, but the Nazi occupation in 1940 destroys the women's idyllic life. For the next four years, Claude and Marcel perform their own acts of resistance, printing and distributing subversive leaflets, but their semi-creative actions lead to dark consequences when the Germans arrest, interrogate, and imprison them for months. It's the war experiences of Claude and Marcel and their circle that strike the most memorable, penetrating note in this loosely spun account of bohemian choices. Thomson approaches the women's story with poetic empathy, yet the result can seem scant and oddly paced, swooping in for consequential moments, then jumping ahead without connection. The effect is both beguiling and detached.A real-life modernist relationship is revived with commitment if not quite enough conviction. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
