“The Frenchman’s Table” by Julie Lomax

The Frenchman’s Table

Julie Lomax
juju.agency (2026)
ISBN:  979-8906004673
Reviewed by Denise Donaldson for Reader Views (08/2026)

In The Frenchman’s Table, Julie Lomax tells stories whose outlines are familiar.  We know about concentration camps, the bombing of Europe, the occupation of France, the overrunning of Austria and Poland.  We know that there was a Resistance movement, made up of men and women, many of whom gave their lives to stop or thwart the Nazis.  Here, a table made by a French father and son records the comings and goings of people who are smuggled out of occupied territory and are passed along toward safety.  Dates and initials are carved into the underside of the table as a means of remembering those who’ve found a temporary haven in the house of the Frenchman’s son, Yves.  He is a member of the Resistance, and his wife Paula is more than willing to help shelter those who are on the run.

In the beginning, we meet Jakub, a Jewish boy who barely escapes execution when German troops round up his family.  He goes on the road, and in turn meets Brigita and Mila, teenagers who have been captured and forced to work on a farm that sustains a group of soldiers. The soldiers are reassigned, and as they leave, Brigita and Mila, along with two other smaller children, are ready to flee.  They and Jakub hide out in the forest until Yves finds them and takes them back to his home.  There, he and Paula take care of all the refugee children, along with their twin girls.  Eventually, the family is broken up with the incursion of German troops who destroy their town.  At that point, the characters’ stories diverge, and they all must survive behind the lines, amid concentration camps and bombings and deprivation.  Their courage, compassion, and determination are the qualities that fuel the main action of the novel.  None of the outcomes is a foregone conclusion; there are surprises, suspense, and consequences both tragic and triumphant.  All the conclusions track with the context of the times.

The greatest strength of The Frenchman’s Table is its characterizations.  Emotions are real and present, sometimes painfully so.  A few particular scenes are so well crafted, so gritty in each physical movement, they reach the point of drawing the reader completely into the event taking place.  Some finely drawn images, such as that of a box of watches at Auschwitz, carry a sledgehammer effect.  If the rule of writing a good novel is to show the characters rather than tell about them, Julie Lomax has mastered the technique. 

As readers, we witness deaths up close; the details are not spared, nor would the scenes be as realistic if they were.  We feel the terror that comes from being hunted, the sorrow from losing homes, the giddy relief from successful escapes.  In the end, we experience the cautious joy in being safe and loved after months and years of living on the edge.

In general, the prose of the narrative is spare but evocative.  Lomax relates horrific events without becoming maudlin, which fits with the stoicism that circumstances forced the characters to adopt.  Even so, some of the descriptions are starkly poetic, breaking the tension so that people and surroundings can be imagined for a moment.  The characters’ occasional recollections of their pasts and families also add a welcome depth, along with distractions from what may be occurring in the present.  We become invested in what happens to this group of people.  There are a few continuity flaws in this book that are slightly disruptive, but if readers just go with the flow of the action, the slight hiccups don’t affect the narrative or its emotional impact.

At the end, we discover how each life in the story turned out.  We also see what happened to the Frenchman’s table, a conclusion that was not foretold.