France, 1918. The Great War is in full force and the effects are felt across the world.

Pauline Deng, a Chinese immigrant living in France, sees the world changing before her eyes. However, as a part of a traditional Chinese family, some things in her world remain the same. Her family owns a successful antiques store in France and has quickly made a name for themselves as a “go-to” shop for many of the Chinese in the area.

As Pauline carves her place in this French world, she learns that her family has other plans for her than helping to run the shop. They plan to ship her back to China for an arranged marriage. Pauline cannot comprehend a life outside of France and struggles to reconcile with this knowledge. She soon runs away from home to find her cousin, who has recently joined the Chinese Labor Corps as a translator in France. Hoping he may be able to convince their family to renounce the marriage commitment.

This search leads her to Camille Roussel, a local French woman in a smaller farming community, who has offered Pauline a room while she searches for her cousin.

Camille has her own struggles, with an abusive husband and a forbidden affair. Camille is in the midst of planning her escape from her dreadful marriage and vowing to end the affair she never should have started.

As the two women spend more time together, their secrets and underlying fears come to the surface as they begin to build an unlikely friendship. The novel weaves Pauline and Camille’s stories together, in a beautiful entanglement of unlikely events.

Pauline: I thoroughly enjoyed Pauline’s character. We see her grow from a timid young lady in China; a girl who is used to being second thought and lower grade priority to her family. We see her transform into a smart, talented and confident young woman thriving in France. Her personality is a bit naive – I.E. her decision to travel mostly alone to a war torn village in search of her cousin, with the single hope that he can persuade her family to cancel her marriage. The decision was rash and a bit theatrical, given that her cousin was not even supposed to be in that particular village any longer. However, despite the unlikely situations the characters find themselves in throughout the novel, luck, fate and some talented writing helped the plot along in a somewhat believable manner. Despite her naivety, Pauline is a very likeable character. I found myself rooting for her to find true happiness and be able to live the life she would choose, rather than what was chosen for her by the family.

Camille: While I enjoyed Camille’s character and eventually felt invested in her plotline, I found myself fairly consistently wishing I was back to a chapter on Pauline. At least until about halfway through the novel, when Camille’s story really picked up the pace. It wasn’t until Camille really started fighting back against her abusive husband by secretly stashing away money, having a forbidden affair with a new man in town and plotting her escape that I was truly interested in all the chapter details around Camille. I did feel that her character was a bit more likeable than Pauline, though. Camille had many different faces: the face for her husband of a doting and respectful wife, the face for her employers and the post office where she works, and the face she reveals when no one else is looking (except her lover) of an intelligent, artistic woman who yearns to finally be free and make her own choices.

While Camille and Pauline come from vastly different backgrounds, they have many similarities in terms of their current predicaments. I felt the writing style intertwined these two stories beautifully. I loved this historical fiction set within the Great War. It is a time of history that deserves to be remembered, and stories like this do a great job bringing it to the forefront of conversations.

The Porcelain Moon is intricately woven, incredibly detailed and beautifully written. While pieces of the story seemed a bit outlandish or incredibly unlikely, the overall storyline fell into place quite nicely. It was engaging and I stayed invested in the novel from start to finish.

A good read for lovers of historical fiction, especially a setting in The Great War. The focus on the Chinese Labor Corps, and the immigrants relocating to France was an interesting story line to follow.

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