An intricately woven story of seven individuals in Paris after the close of World War II using the American High School as a setting to explore large social issues on a smaller scale. Three interwoven love stories that involve couples of different cultures and generations. One romance ends happily, another ends in disappointment and a thire romance ends in tragedy.
France: 1953.Americans arrive to find a mixed reception in a country recovering from a brutal Nazi occupation. French appreciation of the U.S. military role in liberating Paris is mixed with a resentment of the American influence in establishing strict security restrictions that prevent many French communists who participated in the Resistance to Nazism from finding work in activities financed by American money. The high school provided for the dependents of U.S. military and diplomatic personnel is torn between the ideas of civilian education administrators and the desires of military commanders for strict order and obedience .Adolescent students, some of whom have never been students in the continental United States are free to savor the freedom of Parisian pleasure and nightlife adventure they could not enjoy in their home country.
I really enjoyed the authentic detail in THE BIG LIE and felt I had been transplanted to that location and time. The love stories and conflicts held my interest and I eagerly turned the pages to find out what would happen next. I liked Johnston's writing style. He showed a complexity with language that is rare. The dialogue flowed naturally and progressed the plot. Each ofhis characters seemed to have unique personalities and their own speech patterns. Learning about the aftermath of World War II was new to me and I came away feeling I had learned a lot about how Americans are viewed in other countries.
Where do viruses, such as Ebola and HIV, come from and why they are so aggressive? This book changed tenets of evolutionary virology, developing the concepts of aggressive symbiosis and plague culling, which explain much of the horror of plague virus
