The Paris Library: A Novel

An anonymous letter informs the authorities that Clara, who has assumed the role of the Library’s Directress, doesn’t like Germans and smuggles books to Jewish readers. Clara has dual citizenship in France and the US. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Americans joined the war. The US entering the war is a source of hope, but Margaret angers Odile when she claims that the Americans could “hardly do worse than the French army” (216). They later make up when Margaret confides in Odile that her husband is living with his mistress. Odile fears that Margaret, as a British citizen, will be arrested especially since she has failed to report to the commissariat, as law requires.

Rémy asks Odile not to hold back in her letters, and he tells her that things are hard in the prison camp. Odile writes to him of her trysts with Paul, her fears of the Library closing, and the Christmas party at the Library, to which she has invited Eugénie and her mother. Her father, she reports, is always working at the police station.

At the Christmas party, Paul proposes to Odile. She wants to wait until Rémy comes home to marry Paul.