Belle Greene

For obvious reasons, this book made an amazing pairing with The Personal Librarian. I actually read Belle Greene first shortly after Tina Kover's English translation was published in September of last year. (The novel was first published in the original French in January 2021; The Personal Librarian was published in the U.S. in June 2021.) It was fascinating to read these two biographical accounts of the same woman nearly back-to-back. The books are markedly different in tone and structure, for one: Belle Greene is longer, more literary-leaning, and more tragic than its American-authored counterpart. Even more so, the authors made disparate decisions about how to fill in the historical blanks of Belle's life, particularly regarding Belle's personal and workplace relationships. Don't miss the authors' notes on either book! They give illuminating insight into the research and writing process, and the authors' respective experiences of "discovering" the heretofore untold story of Belle Greene.