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A Fifty-Year Silence
A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War, and a Ruined House in France | Miranda Richmond Mouillot
11 posts | 7 read | 8 to read
A young woman moves across an ocean to uncover the truth about her grandparents' mysterious estrangement and pieces together the extraordinary story of their wartime experiences In 1948, after surviving World War II by escaping Nazi-occupied France for refugee camps in Switzerland, the author's grandparents, Anna and Armand, bought an old stone house in a remote, picturesque village in the South of France. Five years later, Anna packed her bags and walked out on Armand, taking the typewriter and their children. Aside from one brief encounter, the two never saw or spoke to each other again, never remarried, and never revealed what had divided them forever. A Fifty-Year Silence is the deeply involving account of Miranda Richmond Mouillot's journey to find out what happened between her grandmother, a physician, and her grandfather, an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials, who refused to utter his wife's name aloud after she left him. To discover the roots of their embittered and entrenched silence, Miranda abandons her plans for the future and moves to their stone house, now a crumbling ruin; immerses herself in letters, archival materials, and secondary sources; and teases stories out of her reticent, and declining, grandparents. As she reconstructs how Anna and Armand braved overwhelming odds and how the knowledge her grandfather acquired at Nuremberg destroyed their relationship, Miranda wrestles with the legacy of trauma, the burden of history, and the complexities of memory. She also finds herself learning how not only to survive but to thrive making a home in the village and falling in love. With warmth, humor, and rich, evocative details that bring her grandparents' outsize characters and their daily struggles vividly to life, A Fifty-Year Silence is a heartbreaking, uplifting love story spanning two continents and three generations. From the Hardcover edition.
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kspenmoll
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#BookReport

Finished up A-Fifty Year Silence-memoir of the author‘s quest to understand & ask of her maternal grandparents, separated by their 50 years of silence and the Atlantic Ocean, why?She felt compelled & obsessed by her quest as carried their past within as the only grandchild. Beautifully written. Memorizing, sensory sense of place.Set in Italy & the US. Also finished the marvelous P & P, & the horrid Untamed.
The others In process.

sprainedbrain I was considering Untamed (against my better judgement)...stepping away slowly now. 😂 4y
Cinfhen Tagged book sounds really good!!! Stacked 4y
kspenmoll @Cinfhen In a box of TBRs I was exploring! I really loved this book- so many reasons. I hope you do! 4y
62 likes1 stack add3 comments
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kspenmoll
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#nowords #memory #genocide #landminesofmemory
“The world was sown with land mines of memory“
—Miranda
Reading in the car while waiting for my son to return with groceries.

Miranda‘s grandmother about the holocaust:
“‘Some words you can‘t even say.‘”

51 likes1 stack add
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kspenmoll
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kspenmoll
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#sundaymorning #coffeeandbooks #memoir
Coffee outdoors before grocery shopping with my son.

57 likes1 stack add
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MissAimz_55
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#magicalmarch Here is March spelled out in titles. Somehow I don't have a book that starts with R so I had to cheat and use the author, Richard Brandon, for that.

vkois88 It totally works!! 6y
23 likes1 comment
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Jennie748
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I picked this up at HPB my last visit. I'm about 45 pages in and very intrigued.

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Jeg
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So much in this book.

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Jeg
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The importance of the written word , especially letters. Wonder if we will get the same from emails. I suspect not. I still have letters from my parents and I love that I can see and feel their words even after all this time. @MrsMalaprop " when I open her letters, she is almost there again ."

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Jeg
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Pickpick

An unexpected find. This book was a delight in so many ways. Firstly the book itself, lovely hard cover, ( most of my books here are paper backs) a dust cover! And printed on thick paper with an uneven cut.
I loved the flow of the words. The story was very interesting to me. The tears came a few times.
I learnt things, I cried, I laughed and I felt deeply for them all. So glad I read it. @MrsMalaprop

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Jeg
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Kathy found this in an op shop today. The blurb has really got me wanting to read it. Sooooo it's about to be read by me now! I have so many books on my TBR shelf but I'm forever being distracted! This book sounds amazing so we shall see if it lives up to my expectations. @MrsMalaprop

charissharpe Looks really interesting, stacked! 7y
4 likes1 comment
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mrldg

The author moved to France and spent years trying to learn what happened between her grandparents to cause the terrible bitterness between them. An absorbing story of a grandchild unearthing her family's history during and after WWII, reads like a great novel.

BookMusings I enjoyed this one. So jealous of the gap year phenomenon and the fact that she wrote a book during it...! 8y
MrBook Wow. Interesting. 8y
10 likes2 stack adds2 comments