Book Club - Michelle Wright's Small Acts of Defiance

Final Draft - Great Conversations

In January 1940 Lucie and her mother Yvonne leave Australia for France, following the death of Lucie’s father. Taken in by Gerard, their only surviving relative, Lucie must settle into the fabled city of lights on the eve of invasion from Germany.

Small Acts of Defiance chronicles Lucie’s coming of age in Paris and a world that is forever teetering on chaos as the Germans exert more and more control.

Lucie begins inexperienced and self consciously out of her depth in a city she worries will never embrace her. Wright approaches crafting Lucie’s point of view with all the naivety and innocence of a young person on their first trip away from Australia. This allows us as readers to experience and marvel at discovering Paris even as the city lights are dimming with the ongoing war.

Lucie’s perspectives vacillate between her love of the sun and surf of her Australian upbringing now tainted by the loss of her father and the enchanting but dangerous lure of occupied Paris.

Lucie’s talent as an artist draws her into circles that soon see her challenged in her role as a either resisting of acquiescing to the German rule. Her best friend Aline is a young Jewish student whose world is steadily circumscribed by antisemtic laws.

Small Acts of Defiance unfolds miles from the battlefields, so familiar in novels of war and takes us onto the streets where everyday people must still make decisions with life or death consequences. We watch along with Lucie, as small encroachments on liberty accumulate to people being taken from the streets and those not directly impacted desperately tell themselves stories to justify their complicity.

Lucie’s story is compelling whether viewed in its historical place or through our modern lens. As a foreigner, as a child, as a woman she feels that she is singularly denied any space to voice her true self. And so she creates small works of art that she hides around the city.

But Lucie is relatively fortunate as she comes to learn when Aline’s grandfather is taken and the family are ostracised from society just for being Jewish. Lucie comes to be haunted by something her father told her of his experience of war… “Doing nothing is still a choice. A choice to stand aside and let it happen.”

Lucie commits to her small acts of defiance and is drawn further into her friends resistance of the occupation. All the while challenged by her own small role and the potentially outsized risk it places on her mother and uncle.

This is a deeply affecting story of a time and a place that cannot fail but to have claim on our modern consciousness. With both sides of any argument seemingly drawing on the spectre of Nazism to fling at their enemies it serves us well to gain a deeper understanding and empathy.

Small Acts of Defiance is also a tonic against despair and complacency. I don’t know about you but I’ve fallen prey to feelings that my efforts amount to little. Small Acts of Defiance reminds us that we are a part of the world we live in, the communities that we interact with and that gives us responsibilities. No matter the ways authorities may pit us against each other giving up or never trying is a choice and that our actions are an important part of living.