Title: The Lost Vintage
Author: Ann Mah
Publisher: William Morrow
Year: 2018
Genre(s): historical fiction, contemporary fiction
Part of a Series: No
Rating: 
Why I Read It: Once Upon a Book Club selection
Summary: Kate returns to her family’s vineyard in France to prepare for the prestigious Master of Wine test. While there, she discovers a family secret that dates back to the Nazi Occupation of France. As Kate digs deeper, will she be able to find the truth? And if she does, will it bring only shame…or much needed absolution?
Review: There are two stories going on in this book and one is stronger than the other. They also don’t intertwine as much as they could.
(Also a personal pet peeve – because the story mostly takes place in France, there are many French words sprinkled throughout the book, which work for the most part because it seems everyone does speak English around Kate though she does understand the language. But then it happens in a diary written by a French girl who admits she is not fluent in any other language…so why would it be sprinkled with random French words when the assumption would be that the entire diary is written in French?)
Kate’s story is less intriguing to me than Helene’s. I don’t know if it’s because Mah was more intrigued by Helene’s story or she let Kate’s story get bogged down showing off her knowledge of the wine making region of France. We’re start with Helene’s and then talk about Kate’s.
The story of Helene is laid out very well, told through her own diary entries. We get to see the occupation of France and the war through her eyes, see how it affects her and her friend Rose, who ends up having Jewish heritage and is therefore targeted by the Nazis. Helene quickly learns who she can and cannot trust as she lives in a time where the wrong word to the wrong person could get someone, including herself killed. Her story was poignant and engaging. I honestly would’ve read an entire book written from Helene’s point of view and I think it would’ve been five moons since Mah could’ve really fleshed certain things out rather than rushing them.
Kate’s story starts out with her spending time with her family while studying for an important exam and dealing with some ghosts from her past – namely with the man she essentially ghosted years earlier. But her story soon gets caught up with Helene as she is determined to learn the story of the relative no one in the family has ever spoken about. And it could’ve been an interesting story had Kate’s own story paralleled Helene’s but it never really did that. Helene’s life didn’t really seem to truly affect or impart any lesson that could apply to Kate’s life. Compared to Helene’s story, Kate’s was just not as exciting or engaging. I cared more about what happened to Helene than to Kate.
I guess ultimately Kate’s story disappointed me. There were some interesting ways I though Mah would go with her storylines but she never did. She kept them pretty conventional and the resolution to Kate’s story just didn’t feel right to me. It just didn’t reach the same level as Helene’s story but I felt like Mah could’ve taken more risks with Kate’s story than she did.
Maybe then, the overall book wouldn’t have felt so unbalanced.
Bottom line: The good plot makes the mediocre one worth the while.
Sex: Mention with some depictions but nothing graphic
Moonlight Musing
What would you do if you discovered a relative everyone refused to acknowledge?
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