Tony Thompson, Hey, Zazou! Ford Street Publishing, May 2025, 388 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781922696410
Tony Thompson has created a historical novel about a group of teenagers in occupied Paris in 1943. This cohort, known as Zazou, drew attention to themselves by wearing crazy clothes and listening to crazy music – crazy for the times. They defied everyone: their parents, their teachers, the police, the Vichy government, and, most dangerously, the Nazis. Fifteen-year-old severely dyslexic Charlie is a skilled musician who doesn’t realise just how good he is until he meets Eddie, a member of the Zazou group. Together they form an unlikely band of disparate individuals, including a German soldier, and they are a success.
Music is an essential within the story. The reader is introduced to many big names of the 1940s, 50s and 60s of the jazz world: Benny Goodman, Charlie Christian, Django Reinhart, Glen Miller and others. We don’t really get an idea of what the music is like even though many individual tracks are named. Many music enthusiasts will explore the medium themselves. Tony Thompson has put together a play list in a guest blog.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. There are several strong minor characters, though in this story they did not need to be further developed. The reader learns incidentally about different locations in Paris, though the distance between them is not obvious. Apart from music, there are themes of war/peace and friendship, Nazism, the Resistance, propaganda, survival, and the less-liked minorities. However, I am not sure that Thompson has truly portrayed the gritty nature of occupied life: the food shortages, absent friends and family, the constant dangers. In the same way, towards the end of the book, Charlie asks, You know there are things going on that would make it all clear, but you never see those parts? (p. 354).
Teaching notes can be found at the publisher’s website.
Reviewed by Maureen Mann
