Review of Skylark by Paula McLain

Skylark gets off to a relatively slow start as the scenes are set, but then I quickly became hooked on McLain's dual-timeline historical fiction, which comes to life through incredible details of life in seventeenth-century and early World War II Paris and showcases characters pushed to their limits in the name of justice.

Paula McLain's Skylark is historical fiction set in Paris and told through dual timelines.

In 1664, Alouette is the daughter of a master dyer at the famous Gobelin Tapestry Works. Certain dye colors are only available to the highest classes, and her father, striving to create a never-before-seen vibrant red, is constrained by longstanding rules and regulations. Alouette herself yearns for creative freedom, but as a woman with no standing, she is not allowed to express her artistic ideas--nor to pursue the development of a dazzling new blue she dreams of.

In 1939, Kristof is beginning his medical residency and living on the Rue de Gobelins. His neighbors are a Jewish family that fled Poland, and when the Nazis enter Paris, Kristof may, implausibly, be the only one who can help save his friends, now under grave threat.

Skylark started off sloooowly for me--my friend Kim was reading it at the same time and we were both struggling with the pacing. Early on, I wasn't sure I was going to feel drawn into either story. But after McLain set the scenes in each timeline and established the characters, the novel took off more steadily, building the world of each timeline with incredible details.

In the seventeenth century timeline, McLain brings to life the toxicity of the process and the wonder of dyeing new colors; rigid gender roles and breathtaking power imbalances; dangerous mining practices; widespread captivity of inconvenient women in an asylum (this section was particularly horrifyingly fascinating for me); and precious stolen moments that sustain our characters through largely cruel existences.

In the 1939 timeline Skylark explores the unfurling of Hitler's spreading suspicion through Europe, including the collective blaming of issues on immigrants; the betrayal of and by neighbors; the snatching of Jewish families for camps and outright murder; and the unlikely heroes who try to save those they can. Much of this felt especially haunting and uncomfortably familiar in light of the unfounded blame upon and hunting and persecution of suspected illegal immigrants in our nation.

The past timeline's mining and the modern timeline's resulting tunnels below Paris allow for a literal upstairs-downstairs pairing within each tale, and the fight for justice exists in parallel in both stories.

I was fascinated by multiple cases of extreme bravery, and by the sobering realities that everyday characters find themselves struggling within. I love a novel in which characters reckon with what they're willing to do in the name of what's right, and protagonists in both timelines are forced to do so in varied crises.

I received a prepublication version of Skylark courtesy of NetGalley and Atria Books.

More from Paula McLain

McLain is also the author of When the Stars Go Dark, Circling the Sun (a captivating account of the real-life Beryl Markham's adventures as an aviator in 1920s Kenya), and The Paris Wife (which due to my staggering to-read list I still haven't gotten to). 

For more historical fiction I've loved, please check out the Bossy lists and reviews at this link.