Jojo Moyes

«The Girl You Left

Behind »
 Jojo Moyes
Jojo Moyes is an English
journalist and, since 2002,
a romance novelist and
screenwriter. She is one of
only a few authors to have
twice won the Romantic
Novel of the Year Award by
the Romantic Novelists'
Association and has been
translated into twenty-
eight languages.
 Life and early career
Pauline Sara-Jo Moyes was born on 4 August 1969 in Maidstone, England. Before
attending university, Moyes held several jobs: she was a typist at NatWest typing
statements in braille for blind people, a brochure writer for Club 18-30, and a minicab
controller for a brief time. While an undergraduate at Royal Holloway, University of
London, Moyes worked for the Egham and Staines News. Moyes won a bursary financed
by The Independent newspaper which allowed her to attend the postgraduate newspaper
journalism course at City University in 1992. She subsequently worked for The
Independent for the next 10 years (except for one year, when she worked in Hong Kong
for the Sunday Morning Post) in various roles, becoming Assistant News Editor in 1998. In
2002 she became the newspaper's Arts and Media Correspondent.
 Writing career
Early in her writing career, Moyes wrote three
manuscripts that were all initially rejected. With one
child, another baby on the way, and a career as a
journalist, Moyes committed to herself that if her
fourth book was rejected, she would stop her
efforts. After submitting the first three chapters of
her fourth book to various publishers, six of them
began a bidding war for the rights.
Moyes became a full-time novelist in 2002, when her
first book Sheltering Rain was published. She
continues to write articles for The Daily Telegraph.
Moyes' publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, did not take
up the novel Me Before You and Moyes sold it
to Penguin. It sold six million copies, went to number
one in nine countries, and reinvigorated her back
catalogue resulting in three of her novels being on
the New York Times bestseller list at the same
time. Moyes would later write two sequels starring
Louisa Clark, the protagonist of Me Before You: After
You in 2015 and Still Me in 2018.
 Plot
JoJo Moyes’s novel "The Girl You Left Behind" consists of two stories that revolve around
an eponymous painting by the French artist Edouard Lefevre. The subject of his painting is
his wife Sophie. When the novel begins, it is 1916, and the Germans have occupied the
town of St. Peronne, where Sophie helps her sister and brother tend to the family hotel.
Her husband is off at war. The German Kommandant of the area, an educated man,
becomes obsessed with the painting of Sophie. Sophie offers herself and the painting to
the Kommandant in exchange for getting her husband released from a prison camp in
Germany. Unexpectedly, Sophie is arrested by the Germans and is never seen or heard
from again.

In 2006, four years after her husband has died, Liv Halston is attempting to get by on her
own. The painting “The Girl You Left Behind” is given to Liv as a gift before her husband’s
death. Liv begins a relationship with Paul McCafferty, who later learns that his company
has tasked him with hunting down the very same painting owned by Liv, for it is claimed to
be stolen during World War I, shortly after Sophie’s arrest. This ruptures their relationship.
Liv refuses to give up the painting, and eventually, Paul quits his own side and through an
investigation, learns that the painting was given as a gift to the Kommandant in the first
place. It is also learned that Sophie was actually reunited with her husband, and lived out a
happy life with him in Switzerland.
 Major Characters
Characters in France in 1916

Sophie Lefèvre: Owner, along with her sister, of Le Coq Rouge, an

inn in St Pérronne, a French town occupied by Germans.
Édouard: Sophie’s artist husband fighting on the front
Hélène: Sophie’s older sister
Aurélien: Sophie’s teenage brother
Kommandant: Commander of the German soldiers billeted in St.
Pérronne.
Liliane Béthune: Spy for the French resistance branded as a
collaborator by the townspeople.
Edith: Liliane’s daughter
Mimi: Helene’s daughter
Jean: Helene’s baby
Characters in the present

Liv Halston: widow and current owner of the painting The Girl You
Left Behind
David Halston: Liv’s husband who died unexpectedly four years
ago.
Mo: Liv’s classmate from an art class and temporary housemate
Paul McCafferty: Owner of a business that works to return looted
art works to rightful owners
Greg McCafferty: Paul’s brother and bar owner
Janey: Paul’s business partner at Trace and Return Partnership
Sven: David’s prior business partner and current firm owner
Marianne Johnson: woman who sold Liz and David the painting as
she was cleaning out her recently deceased mother’s home
Fran: homeless woman who lives by Liv’s building
 Favorite character
My favorite character is Sophie Lefevre , who was
waiting for her husband from the front, meanwhile
forced to cook for the hated Germans and resist the
contempt of the neighbors. As for me, she is the
embodiment of all the best female traits. She's
brave, loyal, loving, caring. Sophie always helps
those who need it. She would do anything to save
her husband. And I'm very happy that the story
ends happily for her.
 Favourite part of the book
My favorite part of this book is Chapter 4. In this Chapter,
the story of the birth of true love in a peaceful time for
France. We see first meeting of Sophie and Édouard, after
which Sophie's life changes for the better. After Édouard
saw Sophie several times, he offers the girl to draw her. He
paints several times Sophie, but the picture never turns
out. But after they got to know each other better, picture
turns out fine. And after Sophie is shocked by the beauty
of this creation, Edward says that the picture turned out
this way because he saw what Sophie really is.
 Favourite qoutes
You are my guiding star in this crazy
world.
It never happens that
everything is as you want.
Helen, I want bright colors.
I want to live.
I am ready to draw you at least
every day until the end of my life.

The ability to earn a living by

doing exactly what you like is
one of the best gifts of fate.
Sometimes life is a chain of
What has been done
obstacles when you just have to
cannot be undone.
go forward, and sometimes just
blind faith.

The history of the painting is not only a

work of art, but a whole family, with its
secrets and secret sins.

If you like something a lot,

Me before you, I did not know
then you can break the what happiness is.
rules.