The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau

“It [stealing] is only wrong in a world that is black and white, darling. If you can take from people who are cruel and unkind and use what you’ve taken to make the world a better place, then what you’ve done is heroic, not criminal. It is your destiny, Colette.”

The family’s supposed descent from the original Robin Hood introduces the novel’s thematic ideas about the endurance of family tradition. Annabel’s first lecture to Colette introduces the moral ambiguity that is debated between what is legally wrong and what feels morally unjust. The heroism of doing what one can to resist or fight injustice is an ongoing argument of the novel, which develops the theme of The Obligation to Resist Injustice.

“No descendant of Robin Hood could ever take public credit for the good he or she was doing in the world. It was too dangerous, and it would subvert the meaning of their work.”

This passage confirms the aspects of legacy, commitment, and family tradition to which Colette has adhered, while the emphasis on secrecy ties in with the novel’s themes about the burden of secrets. Rather than opposing justice, Colette repeatedly thinks of her work as doing good, since the result of her theft is to make her a benefactor of causes that help others.

“Like something you’d give your life for. Like something you’d do anything for, despite the odds against you. Like something that stays with you your whole life through.”

Colette’s questions to her mother after she sees the opera of Tristan and Isolde reflect her innocence and her early, romantic conceptions of love. The love that endures her whole life through is that Colette feels for her family, but the romance of the doomed medieval lovers also foreshadows the course of Colette’s romance with Daniel.

“The final promise Colette had made to her mother was that she would find Liliane and bring her home. Colette had failed in this last sacred task, and she had never forgiven herself for it. Her father hadn’t forgiven her, either. She had spent her entire life trying to atone, but there was no coming back from a sin like that.”

Colette’s feeling of guilt and responsibility over her sister’s death forms an important part of her character arc, contributing to the sense of loneliness and failure that she feels in the early parts of the novel. The single bracelet Colette continues to possess becomes a symbol of that broken relationship with her sister, a reminder of how she couldn’t recover this priceless thing.

“The poems and the notes had brought her to life in a way she couldn’t have imagined, filling her with purpose, reminding her that she was valiant and strong and could change the world.”

The poetry Tristan writes for Colette inspires her to be heroic and courageous, just as the legends of Robin Hood and Tristan and Isolde show the power of literature to inspire, motivate, and explain. This courage kindled by Tristan goes on to prompt Colette to support Le Paon’s cause, in this way upholding the theme of fighting injustice and continuing her family’s work of doing good in the world.

“The pieces of her were all already inside me, like the pieces of your mom are for you. You’ll carry her with you wherever you go.”

Colette’s words to Aviva when Aviva has lost her mother reflect on the theme of Upholding Family Tradition and Leaving a Legacy, comparing the loved one to a part of oneself that can never be lost or extracted. The memories are metaphorically described as a valuable artifact, just like a family heirloom.

“Jewels carried the hopes and dreams of those who had crafted them, given them, and the twin bracelets were, to Hélène Rosman, a piece of who she was. Annabel understood, too, the urge to carry on as normally as possible, because refusing to be cowed as an act of resistance in and of itself.”

This passage makes explicit the novel’s theme woven around jewels as artifacts that transmit meaning across generations and to recipients, providing a family legacy as well as a memory. The subsequent mention of resistance helps connect Annabel’s belief that stealing jewels, her own act of resistance, is a heroic gesture that can do some good.

“I have only followed my heart, Papa. If we let them tell us how to feel, we’ve already lost, haven’t we? Tristan and his family are no different than we are. We’re all humans.”

Colette’s protest to her father articulates the novel’s theme about the power of human love and compassion, framing care as an act of resistance against cruel laws and beliefs. Colette’s belief in a shared humanity takes the side of love as a moral good, opposing her father’s insistence on legality in adhering to the German rules about how to treat Jewish people. This same opposition between morality and legality underlines the family tradition of theft as a means of doing good.

“She had known him for barely a month, but his memory was with her always, along with the memory of losing her mother and sister, all of them reminders of why it was so important to remember the past and try to do good in the world, for in doing so, it might just be possible to turn back the darkness.”

The loss of Tristan becomes compounded with the other losses Colette experiences during the war. Her grief transforms into a kind of legacy, imbuing her with a mission to do what she can to prevent injustice, described here with the metaphor of darkness.

“I can see that you think you’re some kind of savior, Annabel […] But it’s lunacy to think you can make a difference.”

Roger, Annabel’s husband and Colette’s father, represents the view that it’s important to abide by the law. Aviva, an attorney, initially shares this opinion. This highlights the opposition between morality and legality that provides conflict throughout the novel, but his view that a single individual can do little illustrates Roger’s role as an antagonistic force in the novel.

“It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? […] The way that these diamonds have resurfaced like this and set everything into motion?”

As Aviva notes, the diamonds move the action of the plot in the 2018 narrative, and their mystery, which connects to the mystery behind Liliane’s death, becomes the central story question. The endurance of the diamonds, outliving several human lives, signifies the power of legacy and what can survive to become a legacy when a person passes away.

“She was human, and as far as she was concerned, every person who had lived through the war—whatever role they’d played—should be working tirelessly to keep alive the memories of the six million people who’d lost their lives in the Holocaust, so that such atrocities could never ever happen again.”

Colette’s work at the Boston Center for Holocaust Education has a personal valence for her because of her mother’s work during the war, and because of her personal relationship to Tristan. However, the need to confront the enormous injustice of the Holocaust, which she views as a shared moral obligation, resonates both with Colette’s personal family tradition and the novel’s themes of remembrance and legacy.

“Diamonds never really belong to anyone. They’ll witness births and deaths, war and peace, feast and famine, and yet they’ll live on, for millions of years. They have witnessed the past, and they will witness a future we can’t begin to imagine.”

Daniel expresses the philosophy of his father, the diamond merchant, and in so doing captures how the diamond bracelets become a symbol throughout the novel, uniting the storylines, passing from character to character, and expressing the novel’s argument about the value of legacy.

“There was hope for this country’s future yet, even if she wouldn’t live long enough to see it. As long as there were men and women willing to risk their reputations, their safety, their lives for what was right, there was the promise of a better tomorrow for her daughters.”

Though Annabel is rebuked by others for putting her daughters in danger with her activities, she never regrets the decisions she made, driven as she was by a sense of moral obligation to fight injustice. The character of Annabel is the novel’s strongest example of the argument that even small acts of resistance can matter when stopping the tide of injustice.

“Stirring up the past only hurts those who lived through it. It’s all very entertaining to try to solve a mystery, isn’t it? But do you understand that when old wounds are reopened, they hurt very deeply?”

Bill Carpenter’s statement voices the opposite sentiment to Colette’s arguments about the value of remembering, which share in a common cultural convention that examining the past can bring peace or education. Ironically, Bill’s defensiveness can be attributed to the guilt he feels over his actions in the past.

“She didn’t care about the bracelet itself. She was asking what she was supposed to do with a piece that would never be complete again, but more than that, she wanted someone to tell her what she was supposed to do knowing that she would never again be whole.”

When she learns her sister is gone, Colette’s half of the bracelet becomes for her a symbol of what has been severed, a representation of the part of her that she feels is missing. The broken piece represents the breaking apart of her family as she loses her father, too, through his choice to abandon her.

“It was, she realized, a sense of belonging. It was a feeling of being exactly who she was. And it was the knowledge that for this man whose life had always been woven into hers, that was enough.”

Colette’s sense of comfort and familiarity with Daniel, which is present from their first meeting, deepens as they come to realize all they share as survivors of war, the friendship between their mothers, and being immigrants to a new country. Colette believes that the shared past has bound them, but this sense of familiarity foreshadows the later discovery that Daniel is the Tristan who wrote poems to her and whom she loved.

“Diamonds are forever, Daniel. You just need to know where to look for them.”

The longevity of diamonds, emphasized here, helps explain their significant work in the novel, where several pieces of jewelry, not just the bracelets, play a role in the plot. Colette’s remark to Daniel here echoes the repeated phrase of the Prologue and Epilogue that diamonds live on, even when humans do not.

“She was her mother’s daughter. She was fighting against the occupiers. She was helping to fund safe passage for innocent refugees. Never had she felt prouder or more in tune with her purpose.”

Colette’s thievery becomes a confirmed part of her character arc after she loses her family and takes up the cause of helping support Le Paon’s network. In the absence of those important relationships, dedication to the family cause motivates her, speaking to the novel’s themes concerning the value of tradition and family legacies.

“The resurfacing of the bracelet had brought her more than just a window to the past. Maybe it had also brought her a true friend, the kind who understood when her heart was broken and who stayed to help her pick up the pieces.”

Colette’s finding Daniel, as they’re brought together by his mother’s bracelet, is at first a kind of reparation for her grief, a restoration of what they both lost in the war. Upon looking back, the moment when Daniel comforts Colette after she finds the note from Tristan ripples with irony, as Colette doesn’t know Daniel is Tristan, and the bracelet has brought back her first love.

“Maybe that’s true of all of us. We show people the sides of us we want them to see, and we hold the other pieces close. But perhaps it is those pieces—the ones we keep nearest to our vests—that define us.”

The novel explores the consequences of keeping secrets, as well as the freedom and reconciliation that can follow when secrets are revealed, highlighting The Relief of Revealing Secrets as theme. Lucas’s eulogy for his grandfather Hubert Verdier, captured in this passage, emphasizes the novel’s argument that secrets can define a person more than what they show to others. However, the novel’s action turns on the revelation of secrets, suggesting in the end that it’s better to know the truth.

“She was seventy-nine years old now, and she had gotten used to being by herself, to delighting in the joy of spring blooms and autumn leaves, and the magic of each year’s first snowfall. The little house in Marlboro was her haven, at last, the place where she could be herself, whoever that was.”

The chapter that summarizes Liliane’s life after she joined the Carpenter family is highly condensed, but shows Liliane living a life of peaceful self-reliance, a parallel and foil to Colette. The images of her delighting in the seasons represent her contentment with her life, and her sense that she has made peace with herself mirrors the character arc of the other protagonists, who are following the same journey.

“Whatever they do, as long as they are doing good in the world, they’re honoring our mother and their family. Our tradition will live on.”

The novel explores descendants as a type of family legacy, and when Colette realizes that her family has two new generations, she immediately offers to tutor them in the family tradition of playing Robin Hood. Here, the family tradition expands to more broadly include any opportunity for doing good, wrapping up the theme about fighting injustice.