Book Review: Paris Echo, by Sebastian Faulks (2018)

 

For that all-important opening sentence to a novel, this one is pretty good. I let my daughter read it and she enjoyed it so much, she asked if she could read it again whenever she saw me with the book in my hands. I picked up a copy of Paris Echo during an 8-hour wait for a connecting flight in a largely deserted Copenhagen airport. We were headed for Iceland for a 2-week summer holiday of camping and touring around – all dependent on passing a coronavirus test on arrival. Had I ended up in quarantine for a fortnight, the book would obviously still have been required. As it turned out, Iceland in summer with a tent is perfect if you are seeking long hours of uninterrupted reading. This is thanks to the light in the middle of the night being as bright as the middle of the day (no need for a torch) – perhaps just don’t take any kids with you!

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks is a novel that left a great impression on me, not just for the story, but also for the writing. I remember paying attention to sentence structure and sophisticated vocabulary. Paris Echo didn’t seem to replicate that initially, which was disappointing, but I realised that it is me who has changed, not necessarily the author. His earlier novel was recommended and passed around my family and I was probably slightly young when it got to me (somewhere in my teens), hence my awe at some of the long words.

So, despite a bit of a slightly doubtful stop-start relationship with this book initially, it is clear that Faulks remains a very good writer. I had heard an interview with him in the recent past in which he spoke about having lately spent a lot of time by himself in Paris, exploring the city on foot. The result must have been this book, which itself is a tour through Paris, largely through the wide-eyes of Tariq, a Moroccan teenager who has fled home in search of something he himself can’t quite define, but believes has something to do with his Parisian mother, who died when he was young. The other main character is Hannah, a slightly older American academic who is researching the role of women during the Nazi occupation, interviewing survivors from that time, and who allows Tariq to lodge in her rented apartment. The chapters alternate with each of these two narrators providing the first-person perspective, which is a trick that works very nicely. The ‘echo’ in the title hints at what Tariq, through his receding ignorance of history, and Hannah, through her dedicated work, uncover from the past. Characters who apparently come from a previous era may put some readers off, but provide that touch of fantasy or bending of what's possible that I believe most books should benefit from. I don’t know Paris well enough to relate to all the names and places, but the history covered is fascinating, undoubtedly accurate, and also quite unexpected. There are no fireworks or great jolts in the plot, rather the overall impression of the story is subtle and rewarding.

To end on a lower note, the copy I read could have been better edited, as I noticed an unusually high number of errors (such as repeated words) in the text.

 

Favourite Character: There are no characters here not to like (perhaps Mathilde, if you want to judge her actions during the war). The Englishman, Julian Finch, was marginally the least appealing to me, although I can’t say why. Of the main characters, I realised that I enjoyed reading Tariq’s chapters slightly more than Hannah’s. I guess I could relate better to his take on things.