The Paris Hours

This is my new favorite book. I checked my notes that I made while reading and the only thing I kept writing was that this book is so unbelievably good. Every character is beautifully written, each with astounding heartbreak of their own. While reading, I felt as if I knew these characters and wanted to help them. They way everyone tied together in some way was done so expertly. The author made me invest in each character equally. No character was arbitrary or unnecessary. I will read this book many times again in the future.

Four ordinary Parisians on a regular day in 1927 mix with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Marcel Proust and Josephine Baker and Gertrude Stein, and the result is an unexpected overlap of stories and situations. One is Camille, who ignored the wishes of her employer Marcel Proust and kept one of his journals. Another is painter Guillaume who must find a buyer for his paintings before those to whom he owes money force him to pay up or die. Yet another is Souran, a refugee from Armenia, who puts on puppet shows to assuage his demons. And finally there is journalist Jean-Paul desperately seeking his lost daughter everywhere he goes.

I enjoyed seeing how these lives intertwine and play out, on the streets of one of the greatest cities in the world.

Gorgeous prose, interesting characters, and that early 20th Century European setting I adore. I was hooked from the start. There's typically only one or two characters that I wholly cling to in a story, but I honestly can't choose between them here. All of their backstories are rich and fascinating made better once they begin to intermingle. I've had this sitting on my bookshelf since last April and I wish I hadn't waited! There's a bittersweet tone throughout the book, another thing I love. It'll be one of those books that stays with me for a while.

Unpopular opinion: this book was a big ass whiff. I am extremely disappointed. It is not that I hated it, it was just that I wanted to like it so much. It took me so long to get through this ( I re-read the first 30 pages twice) and I could not get into it. There was not that inital “pull” that was so vitally needed in such a small novel. All of these characters I thought were extremely underdeveloped (the book follows 4 main characters and it is only 250 pages). At first I read that the book takes place over the span of a day in Paris, but actually the book is primarily spent drawing on past memories of each of the characters. I think that the organization of the book led to this pitfall. with 4 perspectives, all the chapters were sequential. This was a lost opportunity because at certain points certain story lines were extremely compelling but after the chapter about said person (some were only 3-4 pages) you had to wait a whole round of people to get back to that. By the time it got back to that person I was thinking to myself, “oh yeah I forgot about this.” And I was referring to things that you, as the reader, should certainly not forget (!!!!) I am so so saddened by this book because I just wanted so much more from it. Also, I have a slight problem with the fact that this book was written about (primarily) French people living in France, but the book is in English. I kept reminding myself that they are actually talking to each other in French. The subtle hint at french words here or there was a miss for me. There is something just so exquiste and romantic about the French language that gives so much to their country and the city of Paris. Because of that lack of language, there was a “gap” in the story. Overall, so much was missed in terms of opportunity in this book and I mourn for it. The 4 characters were okay (I very clearly liked 3, and 1 felt like an extreme waste for me). Also, there were many historically relevant people who were brought into the book but like why? They did not add anything to the story or the character's lives and were there so briefly that the desired impact of their presence was not achieved. If Alex George wants a redo, to take this and edit it to make the story 1. more in depth 2. organize/flow better and 3. think about hierarchy of character, I will gladly read this again.