Review: "Léo in Little Pieces" by Mayana Itoïz

 

Léo in Little Pieces by Mayana Itoïz
English edition published January 2023 via Europe Editions
★★★★

Southern France, 1941: Léo is in love. Sneaking off to make out in the fields, and stealing a few minutes behind a secluded outbuilding, and making excuses to be in town—because the trouble is that while being in love is sanctioned, being a French girl in love with a German soldier is not.

Léo in Little Pieces is Itoïz's beautifully illustrated telling of her grandmother's story, told in some of the little pieces that her grandmother told her. (There's a second meaning to the title, but it would be a bit of a spoiler.) Most of the story takes place in the 1940s—Léo against the Nazi invasion of her home yet head over heels for a certain Nazi soldier—but there are snippets from later in Léo's life, as the war recedes into the past and her life becomes steadier, and as her granddaughter (Itoïz) starts to get curious about her grandmother's past.

There's a wonderful complexity here—Itoïz leaves a lot unsaid about Felix, perhaps because there is much that Itoïz does not say but also perhaps because there are many questions that her grandmother could not have answered. That is: Felix is neither portrayed as a hard-line Nazi nor as a sympathizer of the Resistance; the reality was probably somewhere in between, which is an uncomfortable grey area that isn't often enough talked about. Meanwhile, Léo is firm in what she believes but...maybe best described as "young." Confident and headstrong and perhaps with a bit of a sense of invincibility. No excuses here, just one woman's story. (It's worth looking up more info on "horizontal collaboration"—it's touched on here, but other articles and books give far more information and context.)

Altogether a really lovely, if (at times, and for obvious reasons) sad, read.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.