PositiveJewish Book CouncilOn the one hand, The Renoir Girls is a story of the 0.01 percent, the upper crust (gratin). And on the other, it is a story of a Jewish family navigating timeless questions of love, war, marriage, and divorce, as well as pressures of modernity, including dilemmas about conversion and safety ... Ostler vividly describes the salons and parties at the Cahen d’Anver mansion in Paris ... Avoids the mythic ... Ostler provides a heavily detailed history of these critical junctures in modern French and Jewish life through the story of this once-renowned family and their lesser-known stories ... This is a modern biography that tends toward comprehensive over representative.
