Review: Code Name: Lise by Larry Loftis
Code Name: Lise follows the wartime employment of Odette, the most decorated spy of WWII. Odette was a Frenchwoman who married an Englishman and lived there with him and their three daughters. During the war, due to a slight mix-up, Odette is asked to find someone to care for her daughters and become a spy due to her intellect and ability to speak French like the native she was. She was a spy during the war and was also tortured as a prisoner and held captive until the war ended.
This book covered a really interesting woman's career very thoroughly. Reading this book gives a pretty in-depth account of Odettes wartime activities where possible to know them. I would have liked more introductory information about Odette pre-war, but I have no clue if that is information that is available at all, so I do not fault the author for not including it.
Loftis does an excellent job of writing about the actualities of the situations Odette was in, maintaining his biographer's lens, and maintaining dramatic tension and interest throughout the book. He provides context around events and people that come up as we follow Odette's journey.
I did find this book a bit dry at times, especially in the latter half. I began to be bothered by what I interpret as a lack of deeper analysis of the information he was presenting in the book. We learn of people trying to discredit Odette's story because she was a married woman who fell in love with another man while being a spy, and there were a few other mentions of Odette's gender being grounds for people to treat her with kid gloves and that is not addressed really at all. There were other similar opportunities, but it just seemed like Loftis would rather write a book where he hides his own lens and broader analysis to such a point that reading it became a bit boring. If I didn't want the lens of a biographer, I wouldn't read a biography.
This is not to say I disliked the book; I did enjoy my reading experience. I do think the Loftis presents information in a very approachable way and did not talk around atrocities. This was a really interesting story that I am sure I shall revisit at some point in the future, and it is truly an excellent tale. This book does the 'narrative nonfiction' thing very well throughout the book; it is just as engaging as a word of fiction for large swaths of the book. I genuinely enjoyed learning about this truly interesting woman.
I would absolutely recommend this book to folks who like to read historical accounts surrounding the second world war, to people who are at all interested in spies, and to folks who just like a fast-paced narrative biography.
