Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

A Novel

By: Francine Prose

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Rosalind Ashford, Geoffrey Cantor, Nicola Barber, Suzanne Toren, Maggi-Meg Reed

A richly imagined and stunningly inventive literary masterpiece of love, art, and betrayal, exploring the genesis of evil, the unforeseen consequences of love, and the ultimate unreliability of storytelling itself.

Paris in the 1920s shimmers with excitement, dissipation, and freedom. It is a place of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. It is at the Chameleon where the striking Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing lesbian, finds refuge among the club’s loyal denizens, including the rising Hungarian photographer Gabor Tsenyi, the socialite and art patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol; and the caustic American writer Lionel Maine.

As the years pass, their fortunes—and the world itself—evolve. Lou falls desperately in love and finds success as a race car driver. Gabor builds his reputation with startlingly vivid and imaginative photographs, including a haunting portrait of Lou and her lover, which will resonate through all their lives. As the exuberant twenties give way to darker times, Lou experiences another metamorphosis—sparked by tumultuous events—that will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something far more.

Beautifully Written, Wonderfully Performed

What made the experience of listening to Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 the most enjoyable?

I don't like first-person narration, and I don't like books that change point of view in each chapter. This book had both, and I loved it! The weaving of the different perspectives built the story in a totally engrossing way.

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Having different readers for the different voices worked really well. It was almost like a radio play.

Any additional comments?

What really makes this book, above all, is the lucid, playful and articulate writing. It is a pleasure to listen to.

A Masterpiece

Francine Prose weaves an elaborate tapestry of time and history to patch together the quiltwork of her characters' intersecting lives in this brilliantly penned novel. Her truly first-rate storytelling is matched by an equally skilled cast of narrators who bring such life to the characters of Prose's tale.

What I wouldn't give to be sitting at a banquette

What I wouldn't give to be sitting at one of the banquettes at The Chameleon Club!

The dancing! The orchestra! The girls? It is all brought so vividly rendered, I could smell the cigarettes and taste the watered-down gin. Prose's exploration of the nature of evil is smart and compelling canted against a terrific narrative.

This tour de force by Francine Prose is rooted in the 1932 Brassai photograph “Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle.” Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 is a fictionalized account of the life of one of the subjects of that photograph, Violette Morris - an Olympic hopeful, professional race car driver, and Nazi collaborator. In the book, she is Lou Villars, a French cross dressing lesbian whose choice of increasingly toxic lovers contributes to her fragile sense of self, smoldering resentment, and dangerous unhappiness. Yet the sources of her disappointment are many from her parents to her own country. Prose uses this tangle of complicated emotions to explore the more intellectual questions that surround the nature of evil. All while taking the reader through the nocturnal streets of Brassai’s pre-war Paris, the egos of writers and artists, the heady days lived by lovers and scoundrels flung towards another world war. What does disappointment and adversity churn into? Are some people bound to become evil or good? Prose doesn’t rely on black and white answers; she revels in the shades of gray. She keeps the narrative lively and compelling, torqued between what the characters can control and what they cannot - another fascinating place for a reader to be, that gray, in-between place. Readers may take issue with the fact that Lou’s story is told in everyone else’s voice but her own. I think Prose found just the right pitch to tell Lou’s story. A central character who ultimately takes some sense of pleasure in evil can become too heavy and the lines of inquiry that run from such a character, too clichéd. Not here. Having Lou’s life filled in by such a diverse cast lights the narrative on fire; it feels kaleidoscopic. Finally, I can’t remember the last time I so thoroughly enjoyed an ending. Ironic, and odd, and deeply satisfying.

The only negative part of the experience was the fake, French accents. Listening to the baroness made me cringe.

OMG but I loved it

Truth is certainly stranger than fiction. I was 6 hours in before I said to myself, my God! This is too effed-up not to be a true story. So I googled Lou Villars and it turned out that it's mostly true. The character Lou Villars is based on real-life character Violette Morris, the cross-dressing lesbian, once-celebrated French athlete and race car driver who turned into turned into a spy and torturer for the Nazis. The story was so bizarre that, once I figured out it was true, I couldn't put it down. Also, it has a great cast of readers who do such credit to their characters. This just makes it harder to put the book away at night!

This book is not for prudes or intolerant people. Although the sex is not that explicit (well,sometimes it's pretty rowdy), there are cross-dressers, homosexuals, and very sensual cabaret acts at The Chameleon Club.

This is undoubtedly Francine Prose's best novel yet, and is beautifully written. You'll have to decide for yourself how much is true - I decided to believe it was almost all true.

An unmitigated disaster

What made the experience of listening to Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 the most enjoyable?

Absolutely nothing. I stopped listening after the third "'er 'usband in Paree". Why on earth choose such a pot pourri of lousy accents? Gabor doesn't even attempt an accent, while the women mostly sound like bad imitations of Yvonne Arnaud on an off night (look her up).

What was one of the most memorable moments of Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932?

When I stopped listening

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of the narrators?

Juliet Stevenson

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

"This film can't be any worse than the audio version"

Any additional comments?

Francine prose is a magnificent writer, and she has come up with an intriguing subject. She deserves better than this. I'm off to buy the hard cover. My ratings for "overall" and "story" are based on what I hope the book will be.