Date: January 2, 2025
Author: Jo Jo Moyes
Title: The Girl You Left Behind
I must say, what an achievement! I was captivated from page one, and I have my cousin-in-law to thank for the recommendation.
I had no idea what the term ‘provenance’ meant prior to reading this tale. It is essentially the history of a piece of artwork. The story told in this novel is of the provenance of a lovingly painted portrait; from the inception during World War I and all the way through current times.
Let me explain, please. There was once a French couple, very much in young love. While courting his future wife the husband had taken to painting her into eternal youth via steady brushstrokes across a simple piece of canvas, and so began this tale.
Soon the Germans invaded and brought with them prison camps and hunger and pillaging of valuable artwork. Through many decades’ worth of series of events the painting came to be given (in modern times) to a wife, Liv, on her honeymoon. The husband has since passed and Liv has grieved long and hard for her lost love. Remembering happier time of loving each other beneath the thoughtful gaze of the portrait it came to have deep meaning for her.
Liv’s ownership eventually becomes challenged when it comes to light that the artwork had possibly been procured during World War I through looting and theft. The press picked up the story and now that an intense court battle has ensued the whole world knows how Liv is fighting tooth and nail to keep the painting which so signified the love her and her husband had shared.
In the telling of this story the reporters painted Liv in an awful light and untrue whisperings of antisemitism began to circulate. Making her seem as though she was thumbing her nose at all the people whom suffered the effects of the looting and the theft of so much artwork. The public felt they needed to get involved with sharing their 2-cents-worth. And not in a very nice way either.
She comes to a fork in the roads and must make a decision. Is this battle worth pursuing knowing the mobs were forming and picking up their pitchforks, lighting their torches? Is keeping a material possession worth all she could lose? Possibly including her own life?