So here is a brief paraphrased selection of what others have thought of Last Christmas in Paris: A Novel of World War I: It seems inevitable that some readers love it, some are ambivalent, and some simply don’t enjoy it at all. It’s always interesting to see what readers think of a book. One of the Correspondents Receives a Princess Mary Gift Box The way the novel deals with both the unexpected and the transitory element of life can ring a bell in our own experience. The romance and the realism that evolve from the letters during the course of the war are moving and at times shocking. A brief ending brings us back to Christmas Eve 1968 and a final letter written in February 1969. Rather it’s an interesting and extended flashback from 15 December 1968 to the war years of 1914 to1918 and the letters exchanged by Evie Elliot and Thomas Harding during that time. This book is nothing like the 1972 film Last Tango in Paris or the more recent and delightful Last Tango in Halifax series on TV.

The tradition has pretty much died out now, so it’s refreshing to find a modern story like this, written collaboratively by two recognized authors, Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb.ĭon’t be fooled by the title.

Our last Christmas together there was one of the happiest, wasn’t it? What little we knew then of the challenges the New Year would bring (p 363).ĭoes anyone write letters anymore? How long is it, dear reader, since you sat down, pen in hand and a clean sheet of paper in front of you, and composed a clearly written epistle to someone? Yes, letters were also once known as epistles, and that’s why Last Christmas in Paris falls within the tradition of the epistolary novel-a story written almost entirely in the form of letters. I hope you did as I wished and took this letter to Paris to read.

Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor