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Summary
Summary
Nothing bad can happen at the Ritz; inside its gilded walls every woman looks beautiful, every man appears witty. Favored guests like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coco Chanel, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor walk through its famous doors to be welcomed and pampered by Blanche Auzello and her husband, Claude, the hotel's director. The Auzellos are the mistress and master of the Ritz, allowing the glamour and glitz to take their minds off their troubled marriage, and off the secrets that they keep from their guests -- and each other.
Author Notes
Melanie Benjamin was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and attended college there. She has been an avid reader all her life and firmly believes that a lifetime of reading is the best education a writer can have.
After college Melanie married and moved to the Chicago area to raise her children, but the desire to write was always there in the background. Soon she began writing for local magazines and newspapers before venturing into fiction. As Melanie Hauser she published two contemporary novels.
Now writing as Melanie Benjamin, she's incorporated her passion for history and biography into ALICE I HAVE BEEN her first historical novel; THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MRS. TOM THUMB is her second, and was published July 2011. Her book,The Aviator's Wife, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2013. The Swans of Fifth Avenue made the iBooks best seller list in 2016.
Melanie and her family still live in the Chicago area where she enjoys writing, taking long walks, and gardening.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This impeccably researched, lyrically told historical about a brash American woman and her French husband during WWII is a remarkable achievement. Blanche Ross Auzello doesn't care for being a proper, quiet wife, much to the dismay of her somewhat stuffy husband, Claude, the manager of Paris's luxurious Hotel Ritz. In June 1940, Claude returns from military service to find that a host of high-ranking Nazi soldiers have commandeered the hotel as their Paris headquarters. For the next four years, he and Blanche play unwilling hosts to the Germans-and, unbeknownst to each other, both begin working in the French Resistance. They narrowly avoid disaster until immediately before the Americans liberate Paris, when Blanche gets into trouble Claude can't resolve, and a shocking secret about Blanche's past is revealed. Benjamin (The Aviator's Wife) skillfully weaves in a host of historical figures-including Coco Chanel, alleged to be a Nazi sympathizer, and Ernest Hemingway-whose vibrant presences make Benjamin's protagonists and engaging group of supporting characters shine all the more. Even readers who aren't big fans of historical fiction might be swayed by this outstanding tale. Agent: Laura Langlie, Laura Langlie Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Benjamin, who has made a career out of fashioning compulsively readable historical fiction starring real-life women (among several others, The Aviator's Wife, 2013, about Anne Morrow Lindbergh), does it again here with the life story of American expatriate Blanche Auzello, the titular Mistress of the Ritz, whose French husband, Claude, managed the legendary Paris hotel from the Jazz Age into the sixties and, notably, during the German Occupation. The novel improbably but effectively combines a delectable, upstairs-downstairs look at the operation of a luxury hotel; a many-textured and deeply romantic love story; and a compelling drama of the French Resistance. Driving the whole is the tantalizing premise: that both Claude and Blanche, unbeknownst to one another, were deeply involved in the Resistance despite spending their days catering to the Nazis, who had taken over the Ritz. The mutual deception strains the marriage, as Claude feigns multiple affairs to explain his nocturnal absences, while Blanche, who was famous for downing martinis with the likes of Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway, pretends to spend her nights awash in gin. Readers of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale (2015) are the natural audience for this book club-ready historical novel.--Bill Ott Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
NOVELS SET DURING World War II can seem dismayingly similar: Families are separated, dangerous missions are undertaken, friends disappear. The books may be engrossing but the formulaic plots sometimes leave a reader wanting an unexpected twist. Armando Lucas Correa's the daughter's tale (Atria, $27) inventively satisfies that want. What's more, it's better written and more tightly edited than most books in this genre, and the story line is breathtakingly threaded together from start to finish with the sound of a beating heart. Or more to the point, the silence between the heartbeats. The novel starts in present-day New York when an elderly woman, who has just received a package of letters from her past, collapses from a heart attack: "One ... silence, two... silence, three... silence, four, five. She took a deep breath, waiting for the next heartbeat." And from there we rush back in time, as if coursing through her bloodstream, to a young Jewish family caught in the vortex of anti-Semitism in late 1930s Berlin. Julius, the husband, is a doctor, a heart specialist; his wife, Amanda, runs a bookshop; they will soon have two young daughters. Julius insists on staying put, providing for his patients, thinking the madness will stop: "Why flee and start all over again?" But then Nazis come to Amanda's store to burn her books, the local synagogue is destroyed by fire and Julius is arrested. From his cell, Julius manages to get word to Amanda as he is dying, instructing her how to flee the country and providing her with money and documents. The plan is for her to put her children, ages 6 and 4, on a ship bound for Cuba, where they can live with her brother, and for Amanda to go to a small French village to live with an old family friend and wait out the war. But as she is about to put her daughters on the boat, Amanda has a lastminute change of heart: She sends her elder daughter, Viera, to Havana and takes her younger one, Lina, to France. Amanda sends letters across the Atlantic to Viera, but they all come back to her. Meanwhile, she needs to protect Lina from the war now coming to France, which means passing her off to one stranger after another, reminding her to count her heartbeats when she is afraid, just as Julius had always said to do. Correa's prose is atmospheric, but what's most fascinating about this novel is his portrayal of terrified yet strong female characters who anticipate future trials and methodically work through them. Amanda knows that each decision she makes will have an impact on the next, but her goal is always survival. IN MISTRESS OF THE RITZ (Delacorte, $28), Melanie Benjamin gives us another strong female character, only in this case she's trying to do more than just survive: Blanche Ross, a young American actress who arrives in Paris in the 1920s and marries Claude Auzello, who becomes the manager of the Hotel Ritz. Ah, the Ritz. The focal point of Parisian excitement and glamour with its celebrity guests: Coco Chanel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway. Monsieur and Madame Auzello take pride in the Ritz, and their role in making the visitors feel "safe" and able to "breathe a little more freely." Until June 1940, that is, when the "top-hatted doorman in a black overcoat" is replaced by Nazi soldiers. From there, mystery, intrigue and suspicion descend on the hallways and behind the hotel's closed doors. Looking for life where death abounds, Blanche joins the Resistance. When D-Day arrives and reports that Allied forces have entered northern France make their way to Paris, she sees freedom on the horizon and makes a crucial misstep. It is a mistake that sweeps Blanche, her friends and her husband into a whirlwind of terror - brutal interrogations and imprisonment - and exposes the secret that she has been trying to hide ever since she decided to leave the United States. As Benjamin has proved before, she has a way of animating long-forgotten history. Inspired by the story of the actual Blanche and Claude Auzello, "Mistress of the Ritz" is a vividly imagined thriller about two enigmatic people who left behind tantalizing clues about their lives. if it's suspense you want, look no further than Jennifer Ryan's THE SPIES OF SHILLING LANE (Crown, $27). Fans of Ryan's debut novel, "The Chilbury Ladies' Choir," will find this book even better - and those who found that first novel plodding or slow on the uptake will be drawn in by this quick and delightful mystery set in London in March 1941. In the wake of her divorce and spurred by her demotion as head of her village's Women's Voluntary Service, Mrs. Braithwaite is forced to re-evaluate her life. She has a secret to tell and she heads to London to make amends and offer a confession to her only daughter, Betty. But Betty is nowhere to be found. Mrs. Braithwaite searches everywhere for her fiercely independent daughter, through the streets of London during the Blitz and in its hospitals filled with bombing victims. Mr. Norris, her daughter's landlord, becomes Mrs. Braithwaite's reluctant sidekick, and together they enter into dive bars, secret meetings of the British Union of Fascists and underground spy rings with double agents and fake passports. All the while they are looking for clues, trying to evade capture, kidnapping and worse - and becoming unlikely friends. As the plot develops, it becomes clear that Ryan has created more than a potboiler. She uses the story to explore maternal love and the sometimes fraught relationships between mothers and daughters as well as the capacity for friendship among strangers. Ryan's subtlety shines in her acknowledgment of the importance of remembering the people who pass through our lives ("I'd like people to talk about how I helped them," Mrs. Braithwaite says) and in her descriptions of how war and conflict can teach empathy ("I can hardly believe how much of life I notice now") and change people for the better. familial love is also at the center of Rachel Barenbaum's debut novel, A BEND IN THE STARS (Grand Central, $28), an epic march across Russia during the summer of 1914 against a backdrop of dual menace: the impending war with Germany and the mounting hostility of the czar's army toward the Jewish community. The novel features a cast of characters centered on two siblings, Miri Abramov, a young Jewish surgeon, and her genius brother, Vanya, a physicist who thinks he can complete Einstein's theory of relativity if he witnesses the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, and by so doing gain passage to America for his entire family. Early in the book, the siblings are forced to split up in this quest because of growing anti-Jewish sentiment. Vanya travels with Yuri, Miri's fiance, to join an American scientist who plans to photograph the eclipse. But after Vanya leaves, Miri discovers that he is in danger. With the help of a Russian Army deserter - whom she hides in her basement and cares for while he recovers from an injury - Miri goes in search of her brother. Their search is a perilous one, confronting Miri and her soldier companion with unexpected threats and testing their relationship. As Barenbaum poignantly writes: "Everything in our universe is made of pieces." Yet "no laws are absolute. Life, the universe, they aren't written in stone." The dialogue feels remarkably honest, and time passes in the novel like a train hurtling toward its destination with stops, starts and lurches. The history of the period and the region has been carefully studied, but Barenbaum carves a fresh story from some of its most evocative and disturbing details. IF YOU CAN'T GET ENOUGH of 20th-century Russia, leap ahead 50 years to THE RED DAUGHTER (Random House, $26), John Burnham Schwartz's novel about Stalin's only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, who defected to the United States in 1967, leaving two children behind in Moscow. Svetlana's C.I.A. profile is revealed early in the book. It's a telling passage, one that sets up much of what follows in this sad, traumatic tale of Svetlana's life and her relationship with Peter Horvath, a young American lawyer whom the C.I.A. has tasked with bringing Svetlana to New York. (That lawyer is very loosely based on Schwartz's father, Alan.) The C.I.A. describes Svetlana as "an active, alert and intense individual," a "very dependent person used perhaps to being bullied by her powerful father." The report goes on to suggest that she is "prone to become a disciple or a follower," with a tendency to become "jealous and disappointed when others receive the acceptance and praise she wants" and "furious when she feels she has been misled or misdirected." The ensuing narrative proves just how prescient this analysis is. The story, which captures the mysterious Svetlana through her imagined journal entries and letters, as well as Horvath's "editor's notes," is lively and engaging. As a novel, "The Red Daughter" does exactly what good historical fiction should do: It sends you down the rabbit hole to read and learn more. Schwartz includes a great list of books that inspired him to write his novel and that readers might want to explore. Of special interest is the section on Svetlana's time in Scottsdale, Ariz., at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship, and her brief marriage to Sid Evans, a Wright apprentice and protege (modeled on the architect William Wesley Peters), with whom she has a son. Let's just say that there is another fascinating novel to be written about Peters and Wright's widow. SPEAKING OF FAMOUS DAUGHTERS, there's a new novel out about Alice Roosevelt, the oldest child of Theodore Roosevelt. Reading about Alice - her rebellious nature, her attention-grabbing antics - is always a pleasure. That said, american princess (Berkley, paper, $16), by Stephanie Marie Thornton, is long - and it drags at times. The novel is written in Alice's voice and divided into three parts. It begins when she is 17 years old. President William McKinley has just died in office, and Alice is about to become the first daughter. The book ends near the final moments of Alice's life at the age of 96. The first section sets the scene: Alice is the wild child in the White House, the "connoisseur of mistakes," carrying a pet snake around in her purse, smoking and chewing gum and jumping into a swimming pool fully dressed while on a diplomatic mission. There's no question that she is desperate for her father's attention. Despite all the warnings, she falls in love with Congressman Nick Longworth. Yes, it's fun - after all, she's a celebrity behaving badly. The book picks up in the second section when Alice comes into her own against the backdrop of Nick's numerous affairs and drunken behavior. It's perversely satisfying to see Alice torpedo her husband's congressional re-election as she helps her father's unsuccessful third-party campaign to upset President William Howard Taft in his fight against Woodrow Wilson. She clearly wants a divorce from Nick, but it's not going to happen, so her loyalties are with her father. Good for her. The third part, which recounts her relationship with Senator Bill Borah; the birth of her child, Paulina; the death of various men in her life; and Paulina's suicide at 32, offers abundant proof that life isn't just a game for Alice - that joy and heartbreak are real for her. The book is an ambitious one, and it could have benefited from more editing. There's a lot to take in. Still, Thornton has done a great deal of research, so much that at times you feel as if you're reading a memoir. It's hard to say no to a book about Alice Roosevelt. it should also be hard to say no to a novel about the endlessly fascinating poet Elizabeth Bishop. What's not to like about a novel that reimagines Bishop's time in 1937 Paris, hanging out at Sylvia Beach's bookstore and drinking champagne at Le Boeuf sur le Tóit cabaret on the eve of World War II? A lot, in the case of Liza Wieland's PARIS, 7 A-M. (Simon & Schuster, $26.99). Bishop's childhood, including her father's untimely death and her mother's mental breakdown, was unbelievably tragic, and her relationships in college and beyond provide much fodder to explore. Alas, Wieland's book is a disappointment. While some excitement and drama ignite nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, it's over before you can take it all in, and the writing is terribly disjointed. The ending skips through the years 1938 to 1979, wrapping up decades of Bishop's life in a mere 24 messy pages. If there is one positive outcome of reading this book, it is that it might make you want to rediscover Bishop's poetry, which, if you're like me, you may not have turned to since senior year of high school. Don't bother putting this novel in your backpack as you head out of town; pick up one of Bishop's collections instead. susan ellingwood is a former books and opinion editor at The Times.
Kirkus Review
An American ex-flapper and a Parisian hotelier weather the German takeover of the Paris Ritz.Benjamin's new novel is a lively portrait of the opulent grand hotel which drew Picasso, Hemingway, Cole Porterand Hermann Gring. In fact, more than a year before June 14, 1940, when invading Germans marched down the Champs Elysees, Gring and others were visiting Paris hotels to vet future Nazi headquarters. As the Occupation wears on, hotel director Claude Auzello and his American wife, Blanche, find it increasingly difficult to maintain their facade as the happily married team who run the Ritz. Their relationship was already challenged by Claude's announcement that he had reserved Thursday nights for his mistress. In his insistence that infidelity is a French male privilege, Claude can be insufferable, and Blanche, over the years, has been known to desert him, temporarily. On one such escapade, she befriends Lily, a young radical who goes off to fight in the Spanish Civil War before returning to Paris to draw Blanche into the Resistance. Blanche is disappointed by Claude's apparent willingness to toady to the Nazis who have become the Ritz's most privileged guests (along with a certain high-profile collaboratrice, Coco Chanel). The narrative ricochets between the 1920s, when the couple met, and the novel's present: the Occupation and its antecedents. Thanks to alternating points of view, readers are mostly privy to the secrets Blanche and Claude keep from one another. However, the delay in revealing the most critical secret of all, far from enhancing suspense, hamstrings the full exposition of Blanche as a character. The Auzellos were real people, and the facts of their lives are only a Google away. As Benjamin points out in her author's note, the Auzellos' story, though captivating, has not been often told, and the record is sparse. Benjamin hews closely to what is known, but the fully realized humanity of the Auzellos gets lost in the unknownthe realm where novelistic imagination is required.The Ritz itself is the most well-rounded character here. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Romanced by an Egyptian prince, Blanche Ross arrives at the Ritz Hotel in Paris eager to tryst with her paramour. When he is delayed, hotel manager Claude Auzello shows Blanche around Paris. Soon Claude and Blanche are wed, but their marriage has issues right away. Claude does not understand Blanche's independent ways, and Blanche is hurt by Claude's taking of a mistress. They continue to fight and reconcile within the majestic walls of the Ritz. Their glittering fun with the rich and famous comes to an end when the Nazis invade Paris and move in to the hotel. The occupation puts stress on the already fractured marriage as both Blanche and Claude separately (and secretly) fight the Nazis. VERDICT Benjamin (The Girls in the Picture) uses dual narratives and time lines to fill in the blanks in the little-known history of this remarkable couple. Unfortunately, by framing their history as a tempestuous love story the author then gives short shrift to their heroic wartime service. Equally problematic is Benjamin's sometimes sympathetic portrayal of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. The author is popular, however, so expect demand. [See Prepub Alert, 11/12/18.]-Lynnanne Pearson, Skokie P.L., IL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1 Blanche, June 1940 Her shoes. It's her shoes that worry her, if that can be believed. Of all the things this woman should be concerned about on this horrific day, it's her shoes. But in her defense, given who she is and where she is headed, her shoes are a problem. They're filthy, caked with dried mud, the heels worn down. And all she can think about, as her husband helps her off the train, is how Coco Chanel, that bitch, will react when she sees her. How they'll all react when she shows up at the Ritz with filthy, worn-down shoes, her ripped stockings practically disintegrating on her shapely calves. While she can't do anything about her stockings--even Blanche Auzello would never dream of changing her stockings in public--she is desperate to find a bench so that she can rummage through her suitcases and find another pair of shoes. But before she can speak this wish, she and her husband are swept up in the wave of bewildered--well, what the hell are they now? French? German? Refugees?--who are flooding out of the Gare du Nord, eager, terrified, to see what has become of Paris in their absence. Blanche and her husband are part of the great unwashed; dirt and cinders have coagulated in pockets of perspiration beneath their chins, behind their ears, their knees, in the crevasses of their elbows. Greasy faces streaked with soot. They haven't changed clothes in days; Claude packed away his captain's uniform before they left his garrison. "To be worn again," he assured Blanche--or more likely, she suspected, himself. "When we fight back. As we most certainly will." But no one knows when, or if, that time will come. Now that the Germans have taken France. Outside, the pair finally push their way out of the crowd so that they can catch their breath, try to corral all the luggage that is slipping out of their hands; when they packed, nine months ago, they had no idea how long they'd be away. Automatically, they look for a taxi in the usual line outside the station entrance, but there are none; there are no cars at all, only one lone cart, hitched to the saddest horse Blanche has ever seen. Claude glances at the horse, takes in its heavy breathing, the foam dribbling from its mouth, ribs so defined it's as if the flesh has been carved, and shakes his head. "That animal will never see another morning." "You!" Blanche marches over to the man sitting on the cart, a man with small eyes and a gap-toothed smile. "Yes, Madame? Ten francs. Ten, and I take you anywhere in Paris! I have the only horse and cart within twenty kilometers!" "You unharness that horse right now. You bastard, that horse is about to collapse, can't you see? He needs to be stabled, fed." "Crazy bitch," the man mutters, then sighs and gestures toward the street, teeming with humans on foot. "Don't you understand? The Nazis took every healthy animal when they came. This nag is all I have to make a living." "I don't care. I'll pay you twenty francs if you just let this animal lie down for a while." "If he lies down, he won't get up again." The man glances at the poor animal swaying on its crooked legs, then shrugs. "I figure I have three, maybe four jobs left, and then he's done. And so am I." "I'll do it myself, you--" But Claude has reached his wife and dragged her away, even as she still lunges toward the hapless horse and his owner. "Shh, Blanche, shh. Stop. We need to go. You can't save every broken thing in Paris, my love. Especially not now." "Try and stop me!" But she does allow her husband to steer her away from the station. Because one important fact remains. The Auzellos are still a long way from the Ritz. "I would have telegrammed to have someone meet us," Claude says, mopping his forehead with his filthy handkerchief; he looks at it and winces. Blanche's husband craves a clean handkerchief as much as she craves clean shoes. "But . . ." Blanche nods. All the telegraph and telephone poles linking Paris to the outside world had been cut during the invasion. "Monsieur! Madame!" Two enterprising young boys appear, offering to carry the Auzellos' bags for three francs. Claude agrees, and they start to follow the urchins through the streets of Paris, normally so chaotic. Blanche can't help remembering the first time she tried to navigate the circle around the Arc de Triomphe, so many lanes full of honking vehicles going every which way. But today, she's stunned by the complete absence of traffic. "The Germans are confiscating every car," one boy, a tall, pale lad with blond hair and a broken front tooth, says with the cockiness of a youth in the unusual position of knowing more than his elders. "For their army." "I would blow it up first, rather than give my car to the Boche," Claude mutters, and it's on the tip of Blanche's tongue to remind him that they don't own a car. But she doesn't; even Blanche knows that now is not the time to make that particular point. While the ragtag little group straggles along, she becomes aware of something else: silence. Not just from the crowd of stunned citizens stumbling out of the station, spreading out through the city like a muddy puddle of rain, but everywhere. If there is one constant in Paris, it is talk: Café tables crammed with volatile patrons arguing about the color of the sun. Sidewalks, too, crowded with Parisians stopping to make a point, jabbing a finger in a companion's chest as they debate politics, the cut of one's suit, the best cheese shop--it doesn't matter, it never matters. Parisians, Blanche knows too well, love to gab. Today, the cafés are empty. The sidewalks, too, are bare. There are no noisy schoolchildren in uniforms playing in the vacant gardens. No vendors singing while they push their carts; no shopkeepers haggling with suppliers. But she feels eyes upon her, she's sure of it. Despite the warmth of the cruelly sunny day, she shivers and tucks her hand beneath her husband's arm. "Look," he whispers, nodding his head skyward. Blanche obeys; the windows beneath the mansard roofs are full of people peering out furtively behind lace curtains. Her gaze is pulled toward the sky, caught by something shining, reflecting the light, up on the very rooftops. Nazi soldiers, carrying polished rifles, looking down at them. She starts to tremble. They haven't encountered any soldiers until this moment. The Germans had not reached Nîmes, where Claude had been garrisoned at the start of the Phony War. Even on the train to Paris, where everyone was terrified that they would be strafed by bombers as so many people who fled had been; even though every scheduled--and unscheduled--stop caused all conversation to cease as they held their breath, afraid of hearing German words, German boots, German gunshots. Through it all, the Auzellos hadn't encountered a single Nazi. But now that they are here, home, they do. It's really happened, goddammit. The Nazis have really conquered Paris. Blanche takes a breath--her ribs ache, her stomach churns, and she can't remember when they last ate--and walks on in her destroyed shoes. Finally, they come to the enormous paved square of the Place Vendôme; it, too, is empty of citizens. But not of soldiers. Blanche gasps; so does Claude. For there are Nazi tanks in the square, surrounding the statue of Napoleon. An enormous Nazi flag, with its twisted black swastika, hangs above several doorways--including that of the Ritz. Her husband's beloved Ritz. Hers, too. Their Ritz. And at the top of the stairs leading to the front doors stand two Nazi soldiers. With guns. There's a clatter. The boys have dropped the bags and are sprinting off like hares. Claude looks after them. "Perhaps we should go to the flat instead," he says, taking out his dirty handkerchief again. For the first time today--for the very first time since Blanche has known him--her husband looks uncertain. And that's the moment when she understands that everything has changed. Excerpted from Mistress of the Ritz: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
