Play Book Tag discussion

The Paris Hours - Alex George
Audio performance by Raphael Corkill
4 stars

Much of this book is set in Paris on a single day in 1927. Each of four main characters, one woman and three men, are experiencing some form of personal crisis throughout the day. As the day passes, these characters weave around each other in a very colorful Parisian atmosphere.

Placing each character in context requires the author to move back and forth in their personal histories. The puppeteer, Souren Balakian is a refugee of the Armenian genocide. Guillame Blane is a failed artist with grandiose dreams and a dangerously unpaid debt. The journalist, Jean-Paul Millard is a disabled WW1 veteran as well as a grieving widower and father. The hotelier, Camille Clermont, was the devoted personal maid of the late Marcel Proust. The backstories of each character are filled with interesting details.

Proust is not the only famous person touching the lives of the characters. I did not know that Maurice Ravel drove an ambulance in WW1, and later had difficulty composing new music. Josephine Baker and a number of black jazz musicians provide some entertainment. Gertrude Stein, John dos Passos, and Ernest Hemingway all have cameo appearances.

The book is rich in historical detail. The characters are fairly complex for such a short novel. The audio performance was excellent, but I needed the text. Each chapter features a different character, building their current and former lives in fragments. It was difficult to follow the continuity of the nonlinear plot as I listened. I found it easier to keep track with the text in front of me.

That sounds good. Right up my alley.

I think you would like it. It should be a quick read. It was once I sat down with the book, less than 300 pages. The audio really was very good. I just needed to give it my full attention.