57 pages • 1 hour read
The Girl You Left Behind
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of graphic violence, physical and emotional abuse, bullying, sexual violence and harassment, illness and death, and disordered eating.
Historical Context: Civilian Life in German-Occupied France
Sophie Lefèvre’s story is set against the backdrop of the German occupation of 10% of France during World War I, a period of extreme hardship for civilians living there. As documented in historical accounts like Helen McPhail’s The Long Silence, which the author Jojo Moyes cites as a key source, the German military administration systematically requisitioned property and controlled all food supplies, leading to widespread hunger and deprivation. As the novel’s immersive historical setting references, occupied populations in France were placed under day-to-day conditions designed to curtail normal freedoms and break their independence, including rationing, travel bans, curfews, confiscation, and forced labor. Punishments for perceived infractions were harsh and arbitrary, including beatings, sexual violence, deportation, forced labor, and death.
This historical reality is the driving force behind Sophie’s narrative experiences and the dilemmas she faces. Moyes sets this up immediately: The central conflict of the first chapter—the hiding and protection of a piglet—is not a simple plot device but a reflection of the desperate measures people took for survival. Sophie’s defiant speeches to the Kommandant are not only characterization; they inform the reader of the widespread damage and privation suffered under occupation. As the two characters survey her premises, the loss and destitution of the townspeople after looting and destruction is made explicit. Sophie’s first-person narrative also demonstrates the emotional toll to people’s dignity, as she remembers her delight and pride in Le Coq Rouge before occupation. These hardships, and the dependencies they create, form a context for the townspeople’s suspicion of “collaborators”—anyone seen to benefit from a connection with the occupying forces.
Historical Context: The Restitution of Wartime Art
The modern plot of The Girl You Left Behind revolves around the legal and ethical complexities of art restitution, an international movement to return cultural property looted, lost, or sold under duress during wartime. The novel’s early-2000s setting reflects the growing trend of public interest and political action toward restitution at the turn of the century, most notably the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. This established a framework for identifying and returning stolen art to the families of its original owners.
Liv Halston’s struggle to keep Sophie’s portrait is a fictional dramatization of these high-stakes disputes. Paul McCafferty’s work for the “Trace and Return Partnership” (TARP) embodies the restitution movement’s core ethical argument that “Time doesn’t make a wrong right” (211) and that such works should be returned. A prominent real-world parallel is the case of Maria Altmann, who waged a nearly decade-long legal battle against the Austrian government to reclaim Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece, “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” which was stolen from her family by the Nazis in 1938. The story, popularized in the film Woman in Gold, highlights the profound personal and historical significance attached to these artworks, and the public audience for these stories.
Liv’s story, however, is more nuanced, showing her to be a victim of circumstance, and of the ways the law can be applied in specific cases. Although her painting dates from World War I, media attention causes it to be conflated with cases like Maria Altman’s, where restitution rests on the systematic misappropriation of Jewish assets as part of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people in the 1930s and 1940s. Liv cherishes the painting for itself, whereas the Lefèvre family are depicted as cynically using legal structures intended for specific ethical purposes to “reclaim” known Lefèvre paintings “missing” from their archive. This context elevates Liv’s story from a private conflict to a complex public ethical dilemma, forcing readers to consider what ownership means, emotionally, legally, and morally.
Series Context: Honeymoon in Paris as a Prequel
Honeymoon in Paris is a prequel novella to The Girl You Left Behind, published as a companion piece to the novel in 2012. It was released as an e-book slightly in advance of the novel, acting as a “teaser” to the longer narrative. As such, it acted as an introduction to the settings, characters, and themes of The Girl You Left Behind. Post-publication, the novella provides readers with an additional experience within the imagined world of The Girl You Left Behind. In particular, Honeymoon in Paris allows Moyes to explore the two central marriages—Liv and David’s, and Sophie and Édouard’s—in more depth than the novel’s retrospective timeline allows, drawing close parallels between their relationships. Whereas in The Girl You Left Behind, the happy partnerships of these characters are glimpsed only through memories or documents, the novella immerses the reader in their respective honeymoons. Honeymoon in Paris contrasts with the more melancholy tone of The Girl You Left Behind, and it mirrors the novel’s two-period structure. The story alternates between Édouard and Sophie in 1912 Paris and Liv and David in the early 2000s, so readers see two honeymoons that mirror each other across a century, converging around the eponymous painting.
In both timeframes, Honeymoon in Paris shows the characters experiencing some tensions and struggles as they become used to each other and married life. In the 1912 thread, Sophie and Édouard quarrel about fidelity and trust, but they reconcile. In the contemporary thread, Liv and David also stumble on their honeymoon, torn between career and companionship, which introduces the series’s larger idea that marriages are shaped by what each partner chooses to protect, surrender, or forgive. Furthermore, in the 1912 thread, Édouard paints Sophie, and in 2000, David gifts Liv the painting. This informs The Girl You Left Behind: Readers who know the prequel recognize Sophie’s portrait as the physical artifact of a promise negotiated within two marriages. The split Paris setting in the novella prepares readers for the novel’s time shifts and immersive settings, suppling additional material without creating spoilers. Édouard’s bohemian circle, Sophie’s provincial self-doubt, and Liv’s idealism are more deeply explored.
Whether read first or after the novel, Honeymoon in Paris explores how a painting can function as both a love letter and a legal object, and why both couples must face the same questions about commitment, trust, and the cost of keeping what they love.
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