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A review by scarpuccia
Haunting Paris by Mamta Chaudhry
3.0
Recently when I was scrolling through the historical fiction on Netgalley it seemed like every other novel was set in France during WW2. Not only that but they all sounded like they were built to the same formula - heroic women, dual timelines, an undiscovered mystery or secret. This one attracted me because it sounded different, more literary, less formulaic (despite the presence of some of the above tropes).
At the heart of this novel is the night in 1942 when the French police rounded up many of Paris' Jews, including Clara and her two young daughters. Her brother, who is also dead when the novel begins and performs his narration as a ghost, believes one of the daughters might have survived but has never shared this belief with Sylvie, his long term lover. Here is the first of several acts of clumsiness in the plot and artistry of this novel. Why, seeing as his relationship with Sylvie is depicted in ideal terms, did he never tell her? Instead, rather melodramatically, Sylvie finds an envelope and discovers he has been paying money every month to some mysterious person whose name begins with M and it's her challenge to solve the mystery.
The first thing to say is that the author writes really well. I enjoyed her way with words, except when she veers towards the mawkish which she does have a tendency to do. The problems I had were with the structure/focus and characterisation. The novel had too many narrators for me and too many timelines and as a result kept losing its focus. The juggling of timelines and narrators is confusing. There was one incident of a girl committing suicide that I never understood. And quite often the narrative wandered off into irrelevant sideshows. One narrator is the ghost of Julien - a presence which rarely seemed of much purpose to me except as a gimmick. Often he seemed to assume the guise of tourist guide, recounting interesting facts about the history of Paris. The novel is suffused with a love of Paris, though perhaps a little too much through the wide-eyed wonder of the tourist rather than a native Parisian. Another narrator is an American man visiting Paris with his wife. He longs to enter the secret life of Paris and shed his mantle of tourist - something the book itself tries to do. Whenever writing about him the author seemed less inspired and I was never quite able to understand what he and his wife were doing in the novel. Whenever they appeared the narrative drifted far away from the Holocaust.
As often seems to be the case in Holocaust novels, the Jewish characters and their allies were all idealised. It's interesting there's often this fairy tale element to Holocaust novels. As if everyone murdered by the Nazis never succumbed to an unworthy emotion in their lives. For me, it usually serves to keep these characters remote. After all, it's part of being human to occasionally give vent to an ugliness in one's nature. We all do it. Here though they are all haloed characters. We have ideal husband, ideal wife, ideal mother, ideal father. Everyone a prototype of a faultless human being except the ex-wife of Julien who, bafflingly, is the novel's villain. Abandoned by her husband for the much younger Sylvie surely she has every right to treat her victorious rival with scorn. Yet the author has no sympathy for her predicament and portrays her consistently as snobbish and sordidly venal. In many ways she was potentially the novel's most interesting character but received short shrift from the author who was more interested in her fairy story relationships.
In short, it's a novel that has qualities and I really wanted to love it but I kept hitting buffers. That said less cynical readers might well love it to bits.
At the heart of this novel is the night in 1942 when the French police rounded up many of Paris' Jews, including Clara and her two young daughters. Her brother, who is also dead when the novel begins and performs his narration as a ghost, believes one of the daughters might have survived but has never shared this belief with Sylvie, his long term lover. Here is the first of several acts of clumsiness in the plot and artistry of this novel. Why, seeing as his relationship with Sylvie is depicted in ideal terms, did he never tell her? Instead, rather melodramatically, Sylvie finds an envelope and discovers he has been paying money every month to some mysterious person whose name begins with M and it's her challenge to solve the mystery.
The first thing to say is that the author writes really well. I enjoyed her way with words, except when she veers towards the mawkish which she does have a tendency to do. The problems I had were with the structure/focus and characterisation. The novel had too many narrators for me and too many timelines and as a result kept losing its focus. The juggling of timelines and narrators is confusing. There was one incident of a girl committing suicide that I never understood. And quite often the narrative wandered off into irrelevant sideshows. One narrator is the ghost of Julien - a presence which rarely seemed of much purpose to me except as a gimmick. Often he seemed to assume the guise of tourist guide, recounting interesting facts about the history of Paris. The novel is suffused with a love of Paris, though perhaps a little too much through the wide-eyed wonder of the tourist rather than a native Parisian. Another narrator is an American man visiting Paris with his wife. He longs to enter the secret life of Paris and shed his mantle of tourist - something the book itself tries to do. Whenever writing about him the author seemed less inspired and I was never quite able to understand what he and his wife were doing in the novel. Whenever they appeared the narrative drifted far away from the Holocaust.
As often seems to be the case in Holocaust novels, the Jewish characters and their allies were all idealised. It's interesting there's often this fairy tale element to Holocaust novels. As if everyone murdered by the Nazis never succumbed to an unworthy emotion in their lives. For me, it usually serves to keep these characters remote. After all, it's part of being human to occasionally give vent to an ugliness in one's nature. We all do it. Here though they are all haloed characters. We have ideal husband, ideal wife, ideal mother, ideal father. Everyone a prototype of a faultless human being except the ex-wife of Julien who, bafflingly, is the novel's villain. Abandoned by her husband for the much younger Sylvie surely she has every right to treat her victorious rival with scorn. Yet the author has no sympathy for her predicament and portrays her consistently as snobbish and sordidly venal. In many ways she was potentially the novel's most interesting character but received short shrift from the author who was more interested in her fairy story relationships.
In short, it's a novel that has qualities and I really wanted to love it but I kept hitting buffers. That said less cynical readers might well love it to bits.