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A review by literarylawgirl
The Paris Hours by Alex George
5.0
"It's a myth, this idea that you can change who you are simply by climbing on a boat or boarding a train. Some things you cannot leave behind. Your history will pursue you doggedly across frontiers and over oceans. It will slip past the unsmiling border guards, fold itself invisibly into the pages of your passport, a silent, treacherous stowaway."
I love books that are constructed like puzzles where all these seemingly disparate characters come together at some point to perfectly connect to one another. With each piece that is added, the reader is sucked into the journey of trying to figure out the point of the story. The Paris Hours by Alex George is such a novel and the best 24 hours of Covid life that I could have asked for.
The setting is 1920s Paris, post WWI - the city is filled with famous painters, writers, musicians, and refugees. Some of these famous artists make special appearances in the book, but are really the periphery characters: Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, George Ravel, Josephine Baker. The original Shakespeare & Company bookstore also makes an appearance. The main characters are Camille, a maid to the author Marcel Proust; Souren, an Armenian refugee and puppet show performer aching to belong; Guillaume, a down-trodden painter; and Jean-Paul, a grieving journalist. Each of these characters has a heart-wrenching backstory that brings them to this one day where through the many streets of Paris their lives intersect. The writing is literary but with no superfluous details, and the plot is perfectly timed, bringing the book in at just over 250 pages. This is the perfect book for someone looking for an escape to the Paris that everyday Parisians traverse with intriguing characters and a page turning plot.
Fave Quotes:
"This is what war does, mon ami. The whole world is holding its breath, waiting for life to begin again."
"You and I will never get too comfortable here, my friend. We'll always be from somewhere else, won't we?"
I love books that are constructed like puzzles where all these seemingly disparate characters come together at some point to perfectly connect to one another. With each piece that is added, the reader is sucked into the journey of trying to figure out the point of the story. The Paris Hours by Alex George is such a novel and the best 24 hours of Covid life that I could have asked for.
The setting is 1920s Paris, post WWI - the city is filled with famous painters, writers, musicians, and refugees. Some of these famous artists make special appearances in the book, but are really the periphery characters: Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, George Ravel, Josephine Baker. The original Shakespeare & Company bookstore also makes an appearance. The main characters are Camille, a maid to the author Marcel Proust; Souren, an Armenian refugee and puppet show performer aching to belong; Guillaume, a down-trodden painter; and Jean-Paul, a grieving journalist. Each of these characters has a heart-wrenching backstory that brings them to this one day where through the many streets of Paris their lives intersect. The writing is literary but with no superfluous details, and the plot is perfectly timed, bringing the book in at just over 250 pages. This is the perfect book for someone looking for an escape to the Paris that everyday Parisians traverse with intriguing characters and a page turning plot.
Fave Quotes:
"This is what war does, mon ami. The whole world is holding its breath, waiting for life to begin again."
"You and I will never get too comfortable here, my friend. We'll always be from somewhere else, won't we?"