the girl you left behind

by : Jojo Moyes .

(born 4 August 1969 in London, England) is an English journalist and, since 2002, a romance novelist. She is one of only a few authors to have twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association and has been translated into eleven different languages.

“The Girl You Left Behind” consists of two stories that revolve around an eponymous painting by the French artist Edouard Lefevre. The subject of his painting is his wife Sophie. When the novel begins, it is 1916, and the Germans have occupied the town of St. Peronne, where Sophie helps her sister and brother tend to the family hotel. Her husband is off at war. The German Kommandant of the area, an educated man, becomes obsessed with the painting of Sophie. Sophie offers herself and the painting to the Kommandant in exchange for getting her husband released from a prison camp in Germany. Unexpectedly, Sophie is arrested by the Germans and is never seen or heard from again.

In 2006, four years after her husband has died, Liv Halston is attempting to get by on her own. The painting “The Girl You Left Behind” is given to Liv as a gift before her husband’s death. Liv begins a relationship with Paul McCafferty, who later learns that his company has tasked him with hunting down the very same painting owned by Liv, for it is claimed to be stolen during World War I, shortly after Sophie’s arrest. This ruptures their relationship.

Liv refuses to give up the painting, and eventually, Paul quits his own side and through an investigation, learns that the painting was given as a gift to the Kommandant in the first place. It is also learned that Sophie was actually reunited with her husband, and lived out a happy life with him in Switzerland.

The main characters :

Edouard Lefevre

sophi

The German Kommandant

Liv Halston

Paul McCafferty

A few words about the novel :

The Girl You Left Behind is a breathtaking story of love, loss, and sacrifice told with Moyes’s signature ability to capture our hearts with every turn of the page.

I loved so many things about this book, especially the historical story of Sophie and her Edouard. Unfortunately, I felt the modern day story of Liv and Paul to have floundered on for such a lengthy amount of time that it almost took the focus away from the girl in the painting.

Even with the Paul and Liv legal battle being drawn out for far too long, I am still happily loving so much about this book. I am glad that I read it. Jojo Moyes is an author who knows how to draw emotion out of a reader. Her depiction of a simple woman living in a French town under occupation from the German military in WWI.

I was sad / happy / excited when …

• I was sad when Sophi gave the kommandant the drawing that was painting by her husband .
• I was happy when I knew that Sophi was actually reunited with her husband .
• I Was excited when Sophie was arrested by the Germans .