2.5
The Girl in the Blue Beret
ByPublisher Description
Inspired by the wartime experiences of her father-in-law, Bobbie Ann Mason has crafted the haunting and profoundly moving story of an American World War II pilot shot down in Occupied Europe, and his wrenching odyssey of discovery, decades later, as he uncovers the truth about those who helped him escape in 1944.
At twenty-three, Marshall Stone was a confident, cocksure U.S. flyboy stationed in England, with several bombing raids in a B-17 under his belt. But when enemy fighters forced his plane to crash-land in a Belgian field during a mission to Germany, Marshall had to rely solely on the kindness of ordinary Belgian and French citizens to help him hide from and evade the Nazis. Decades later, restless and at the end of his career as an airline pilot, Marshall returns to the crash site and finds himself drawn back in time, unable to stop thinking about the people who risked their lives to save Allied pilots like him. Most of all, he is obsessed by the girl in the blue beret, a courageous young woman who protected and guided him in occupied Paris.
Framed in spellbinding, luminous prose, Marshall’s search for her gradually unfolds, becoming a voyage of discovery that reveals truths about himself and the people he knew during the war. Deeply beautiful and impossible to put down, The Girl in the Blue Beret is an unforgettable story—intimate, affecting, exquisite—of memories, second chances, and one intrepid girl who risked it all for a stranger.
At twenty-three, Marshall Stone was a confident, cocksure U.S. flyboy stationed in England, with several bombing raids in a B-17 under his belt. But when enemy fighters forced his plane to crash-land in a Belgian field during a mission to Germany, Marshall had to rely solely on the kindness of ordinary Belgian and French citizens to help him hide from and evade the Nazis. Decades later, restless and at the end of his career as an airline pilot, Marshall returns to the crash site and finds himself drawn back in time, unable to stop thinking about the people who risked their lives to save Allied pilots like him. Most of all, he is obsessed by the girl in the blue beret, a courageous young woman who protected and guided him in occupied Paris.
Framed in spellbinding, luminous prose, Marshall’s search for her gradually unfolds, becoming a voyage of discovery that reveals truths about himself and the people he knew during the war. Deeply beautiful and impossible to put down, The Girl in the Blue Beret is an unforgettable story—intimate, affecting, exquisite—of memories, second chances, and one intrepid girl who risked it all for a stranger.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Girl in the Blue Beret Reviews
2.5
Katie Gatlin
Created 2 months agoShare
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Jewels
Created 3 months agoShare
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blove88
Created 10 months agoShare
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“3.5
I finished this last night and gave it a 4 but I think 3.5 is more appropriate. It started out… not just slow but stale? I struggled to get to the 20% mark and then set it aside for two days and read something else. It probably didn’t help that I was reading this because of the StoryGraph Reads the World challenge; it wasn’t something I’d seen and was super interested in on my own.
It’s 1980 and Marshall is WWII vet and freshly retired commercial pilot; he’s just turned 60 and that’s the forced retirement age. He also just lost his wife of close to 40 years. And he can’t help but think about the people who helped him back during the war after his plane went down and the Germans were after him. He goes to the Belgium field where he set the plane down, and meets some of the people who were on site after the crash, who helped him and his flight crew. And he’s shocked to see how much it means to these people, who still think about it and talk about it 36 years later. He feels bad because he didn’t think of them much over the years. He didn’t know one of the men was shot for helping.
From that field, back to New Jersey, and onto Paris he begins tracking down the people who’ve stuck out in his memory from that time when he was on the run and being smuggled to Spain to get back to England. At first, Marshall is a real… selfish prick. He’s cheated on his wife since before they were even married. He barely knows his now-adult children. Nearly every family memory he looks back on, he was in a rush to get back in a plane and leave his wife to handle shit. He felt sorry for himself for not flying in enough missions, for crashing the plane after they took fire. But, as he stumbles along and re-meets these people from his past, and learns how much they hold onto that time, how proud they are for what they did to help, he starts to view things differently. He exhibits real growth, and I felt proud of him by the end.
He never finds the one man he so desperately wanted to, but he finds the girl in the blue beret, and it looks as though this may turn out well for each of them since they’ve both lost their spouses. He learns some of the people he knew were sent to the camps, were executed, all while he was feeling sorry for himself. I never truly liked Marshall, but I did appreciate his growth and empathy. That final story, the ending, that’s what gave me the 4, but while I thought about the book throughout today I realized I was going off of those emotions, and not remembering how I had to slog through the beginning when I didn’t want to. I’m glad I read it, though I don’t think it should count as a Belgium book since we spend most of our time in France, but it isn’t something I’d revisit again. To be fair I’ll find a book that actually spends its duration in Belgium.”
Isabelle
Created 12 months agoShare
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About Bobbie Ann Mason
Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of In Country, Shiloh and Other Stories, An Atomic Romance, Nancy Culpepper, and a memoir, Clear Springs. She is the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, two Southern Book Awards, and numerous other prizes, including the O. Henry and the Pushcart. She was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky.
Other books by Bobbie Ann Mason
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