Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

by Francine Prose

  The next time Grandpa waved imperiously for me to turn on the VCR, I restarted the tape from that point. Carrie and the boyfriend flickered onto the screen.

  Grandpa bellowed with animal rage. I practically vaulted across the room. I didn’t dare to admit I’d done it.

  I fast-forwarded to the end. Grandpa nodded and settled back in bed. I surrendered the remote. Grandpa played the tape backward and forward, making what I suppose you could call his own experimental movie.

  Years later, I can still close my eyes and see Grandpa’s harem gathered around his bed, poring over a photograph of a snake eating a frog, while my grandfather watched a bloody arm rise again and again from the grave, just when we in the audience are thinking that the murderous girl is dead and that the danger is over.

  About the Author

  FRANCINE PROSE is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in New York City.

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  Also by Francine Prose

  FICTION

  My New American Life

  Goldengrove

  A Changed Man

  Blue Angel

  Guided Tours of Hell

  Hunters and Gatherers

  The Peaceable Kingdom

  Primitive People

  Women and Children First

  Bigfoot Dreams

  Hungry Hearts

  Household Saints

  Animal Magnetism

  Marie Laveau

  The Glorious Ones

  Judah the Pious

  NONFICTION

  Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife

  Reading Like a Writer

  Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles

  Gluttony

  Sicilian Odyssey

  The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired

  NOVELS FOR YOUNG ADULTS

  The Turning

  Touch

  Bullyville

  After

  Credits

  Cover design by Robin Bilardello

  Cover photograph © Radoslaw

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LOVERS AT THE CHAMELEON CLUB, PARIS 1932. Copyright © 2014 by Francine Prose. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Prose, Francine

  Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 : a novel / Francine Prose.

  pages cm

  Summary: "A richly imagined and stunningly inventive story of love, art, and betrayal in Paris of the 20's, 30's, and 40's"— Provided by publisher.

  1. Paris (France)—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—France—Paris—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3566.R68L68 2014

  813’.54—dc23

  2013048443

  ISBN: 978-0-06-171378-1

  EPUB Edition APRIL 2014 ISBN 9780062199133

  14 15 16 17 18 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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