Coco at the Ritz

A Novel

By: Gioia Diliberto

Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir

Though her name is synonymous with elegance and chic, the iconic Coco Chanel had a complicated dark side, and in late August 1944, as World War II drew to a close, she was arrested and interrogated on charges of treason to France.

Many of the facts are lost to history, partly through Chanel’s own obfuscation, but this much is known: The charges grew out of her wartime romance with a German spy, and one morning two soldiers from the French Forces of the Interior - the loose band of Resistance fighters, soldiers, and private citizens who took up arms in the wake of the Liberation of Paris - led Chanel from her suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris to an undisclosed location for questioning.

What transpired during her interrogation, who was present, and why she was set free when so many other women who’d been involved with German men (willingly or otherwise) had their heads shaved or were imprisoned remains a mystery.

In this brilliantly insightful and compulsively enjoyable novel from the author of I Am Madame X, Gioia Diliberto explores the motivations of this complex woman and portrays the gripping battle of wits that could have been her interrogation. Was Chanel truly a collaborator?

Though the Occupation of France offered a stark contrast between good and evil, few people are wholly heroes or villains in wartime. Most citizens, as the writer André Gide noted, were like old shoes floating in murky waters: battered and torn, riding the turbulent flow, just trying to survive.

By turns raw and vulnerable, steely and flawed, Chanel emerges from this book as a woman who owns her decisions, no matter the consequences. Rich with history and filled with emotional truths, Coco at the Ritz is a story about the choices one woman made when the stakes were the highest. In today’s world, it is a cautionary tale about the necessity of standing against evil when it’s staring you in the face.

©2021 Gioia Diliberto (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

Strong Willed Woman

A somewhat true story about a woman during the Nazi control of France , the worst of times for all French citizens. She was trying to survive as everyone else, but she had connections. Her mother died when she was a child and the father put all the children in an orphanage and he never came back or communicated with them. She felt unloved and no one cared about them. She learned to do whatever had to be done in order to survive. She was wealthy because she handled her money wisely and when the war caused her to close her business she still had resources. She is criticized because this story does not show her giving her wealth away to help the poor, but there is no evidence this was true. She was very generous to her family and friends. I love stories about strong women that survive in the face of all odds and Coco Chanel definitely fits that description.

Excellent story, good narrative

I couldn’t stop listening. It was a really good story and the narrator made the difference