‘[A] thrilling book . . .The Renoir Girls is much more than an engrossing family saga about lucky people brought low. Its real subject is antisemitism, which starts as a background whisper and becomes a terrifying roar. This makes it essential reading for our times’ 

– Kathryn Hughes, The Times, Book of the Week 

‘Profoundly moving . . . With consummate skill and impressive research, Ostler tells the story. Reading the early chapters, when the Cahen d’Anvers family were at the pinnacle of Belle Epoque high life, I felt I was inside an Impressionist painting, dazzled by colour and fun’

– Ysenda Maxtone-Graham, Daily Mail, Book of the Week 

‘[A] story that is at once intimate and expansive, rooted in the particulars of a single family, yet reaching outward to encompass some of the defining events of modern European history. In the end, The Renoir Girls is less about a painting than about what lies beyond its frame: the passage of time, the shifting of identities, the sudden and often catastrophic turns of history’

– Guy Walters, Independent 

‘[An] evocative work of narrative history . . . Miss Ostler has scoured family papers to add rich and telling detail to the sweep of her story . . . As befits such an involving and wide-ranging family saga, she even keeps a big twist in reserve for the very end’ 

– Michael Prodger , Country Life 

‘The final reveal – which makes one gasp – only underlines the artifice of the world Ostler has portrayed, where almost limitless wealth, privilege and familial connections proved in the end no match for the overwhelming evil of anti-Semitism’

– Ariane Bankes, Spectator

‘This is a remarkable and haunting book, bringing the lives of the three young Jewish sisters, painted by Renoir in fin-de-siècle Paris, into extraordinary focus. It is a revelation’

– Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

‘The Renoir Girls is a dazzling achievement, heartbreaking, glamourous, elegiac, revelatory and utterly gripping. It is simultaneously a portrait of Belle Époque Paris, the chronicle of a powerful French family in a world of palaces, estates and the late 19th-century high society of grand aristocrats and bankers, a story of great love, forbidden affairs and family secrets, a biography of Renoir and his artistic milieu, a history of France from Second Empire to World War Two, and the story of French Jews from the court of Napoleon III to the killing camps of the Holocaust – and at its heart are the extraordinary lives of three sisters and a famous painting. A tale with echoes of Proust and The Hare with Amber Eyes, it is deeply researched, beautifully written, delicious, haunting and horribly timely’

– Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World: A Family History of Humanity    

‘The Renoir Girls is magnificent: a grand sweep of a book, an epic told through the lives of the Cahen d’Anvers, their triumphs and tragedies, their romances and passions. Leading the reader inside a glorious gilded world, Ostler introduces us to a fascinating set of outsiders, both the wealthy Jewish families and the artists. Her writing, truly beautiful and melodic, is a joy to read’

– Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five and Story of a Murder

‘I adore Ostler’s evocative and lyrical writing that takes us through pivotal, changing times in history – from the Belle Époque to the world wars – with revelations (and beautiful writing) on art, family and scandal. Ostler’s deeply researched, scholarly but entertaining book, is underpinned by a revelatory secret that will leave you gripped to the end’
 

– Katy Hessel, author of The Story of Art Without Men

‘An exceptionally profound and eye-opening book that educates us – in the most haunting and compelling way – about art, France, religion, class, gender and how the world came to be modern. Like all the greatest books, this is a story of endurance, tragedy, kindness and love. Hugely enjoyable, beautifully written, skilful, deep and kind’

– Alain de Botton