Pinterest tracking pixel
If you are having difficulty navigating this website please contact us at member.services@bookofthemonth.com or 1-877-236-8540.
Oops! The page didn’t load right. Please refresh and try again.
All booksHistorical fictionThe Flight Portfolio
The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer
Historical fiction

The Flight Portfolio

by Julie Orringer

Quick take

Love, sacrifice, and persecution in WWII-era France.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_Emotional

    Emotional

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_LGBTQ

    LGBTQ+ themes

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_Real-life-characters

    Real-life characters

Illustrated icon, Icon_Challenging_Indicator

FYI

This is a very long book with a slower pace and a large cast of characters. Readers who like to take notes while reading are enocouraged :)

Why I love it

Brianna Goodman
BOTM Editorial Team

Before I tell you why I *loved* this book, let me tell you why I thought I wouldn’t: 1) It’s over 500 pages, which often makes me wish a book had been more harshly edited. 2) It’s about World War II, and, having read more World War II novels than I can count, I’ve grown tired of tropes that often repeat in these stories. 3) I picked it up during a massive reading slump that left me no choice but to binge-watch Game of Thrones. So when I tell you this book reignited my reading life and restored my fried brain, it’s not hyperbole. This book is just that good.

The Flight Portfolio is a fictionalized account of the life of Varian Fry, an American who saves renowned Jewish artists from the Holocaust by smuggling them out of occupied France. From securing false passports, to bribing police officers, to hustling refugees across the border, Varian and his team risk their own lives daily to save the lives—and works—of now-legendary figures. But when a former flame seeks Varian out to save the life of a boy he knows, Varian finds himself torn between duty and love for the man he never thought he’d see again.

The topics in this book are massive—forbidden love, prejudice, the price of a life—but Varian’s story never feels overbearing; instead, it just feels real. Like 2017 Book of the Year winner The Heart’s Invisible Furies, this novel follows closely the life of a likable man struggling with his identity in an unforgiving world. There are moments of lightness (a Surrealist party conducted in the nude, for starters), and of course, the inevitable darkness. If you too need to be zapped back to life by a really good book, then this big ass, big-hearted novel is for you.

Read less

Synopsis

In 1940, Varian Fry—a Harvard educated American journalist—traveled to Marseille carrying three thousand dollars and a list of imperiled artists and writers he hoped to rescue within a few weeks. Instead, he ended up staying in France for thirteen months, working under the veil of a legitimate relief organization to procure false documents, amass emergency funds, and set up an underground railroad that led over the Pyrenees, into Spain, and finally to Lisbon, where the refugees embarked for safer ports. Among his many clients were Hannah Arendt, Franz Werfel, André Breton, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Marc Chagall.

The Flight Portfolio opens at the Chagalls' ancient stone house in Gordes, France, as the novel's hero desperately tries to persuade them of the barbarism and tragedy descending on Europe. Masterfully crafted, exquisitely written, impossible to put down, this is historical fiction of the very first order, and resounding confirmation of Orringer's gifts as a novelist.

Read less

Preview

Get an early look from the first pages of The Flight Portfolio.

Read a sample →

Member thoughts

All (3791)
All (3791)
Love (1128)
Like (1681)
Dislike (982)
4272 ratings
  • 26% Love
  • 39% Like
  • 23% Dislike
    Historical fiction
    • Lessons in Chemistry
    • The People We Keep
    • Malibu Rising
    • The Personal Librarian
    • Magic Lessons
    • The Book of Longings
    • Hester
    • The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
    • The Nightingale
    • Daisy Jones & The Six
    • The Lincoln Highway
    • Peach Blossom Spring
    • Booth
    • Sisters in Arms
    • The Perishing
    • Portrait of a Scotsman
    • The Family
    • Things We Lost to the Water
    • The Postmistress of Paris
    • Still Life
    • Send for Me
    • The Magnolia Palace
    • China Room
    • Summer of '69
    • This Tender Land
    • All the Light We Cannot See
    • The Vanishing Half
    • Outlawed
    • The Four Winds
    • The Giver of Stars
    • The Fountains of Silence
    • The Night Tiger
    • Libertie
    • The Clockmaker's Daughter
    • The Summer Wives
    • A Gentleman in Moscow
    • The Great Alone
    • The Age of Light
    • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
    • The Paris Hours
    • The Heart's Invisible Furies
    • The Rules of Civility
    • Circling the Sun
    • The Moor's Account
    • The Flight Portfolio
    • Jacqueline in Paris
    • Don't Cry for Me
    • The Christie Affair
    • The Good Left Undone
    • Take My Hand
    • Bloomsbury Girls
    • The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
    • Bronze Drum
    • The Attic Child
    • The Circus Train