30686326From Goodreads: “In his new novel, Paulo Coelho, best-selling author of The Alchemist and Adultery, brings to life one of history’s most enigmatic women: Mata Hari.
HER ONLY CRIME WAS TO BE AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN
When Mata Hari arrived in Paris she was penniless. Within months she was the most celebrated woman in the city.
As a dancer, she shocked and delighted audiences; as a courtesan, she bewitched the era’s richest and most powerful men.
But as paranoia consumed a country at war, Mata Hari’s lifestyle brought her under suspicion. In 1917, she was arrested in her hotel room on the Champs Elysees, and accused of espionage.
Told in Mata Hari’s voice through her final letter, The Spy is the unforgettable story of a woman who dared to defy convention and who paid the ultimate price.”

My Review

Told through Mata Hari’s final letter, THE SPY tells the unforgettable story of a woman who dared to break the conventions of her time, and paid the price.

She led a tragic life seeking to reclaim from men and officials what had been stolen from her emotionally over and over again. She tried to get back at them by becoming a strip artiste or ‘exotic dancer’ as they were then known, by using her body to make money enabling her to live a comfortable independent life.

This was a short interesting read as I really didn’t know much about Mata Hari. I recognise the name of course from the old Greta Garbo film and old spy movies in which there would have been a Mata Hari ‘type’ femme fatal.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for my digital copy.