The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 12 February 2024
by Alex George
Paris in the 1920s, full of American expatriates, artists and writers. Perhaps only with the perspective of history can we recognize what a vibrant and creative ferment was going on there. Did the people who lived and worked in that time really know how exciting and unusual it was? Did the musicians in New York's Village in the 1960s know it? Did the hippies of San Francisco? Did the artists of the Italian Renaissance? It is hard to say. It is easy enough to look back and see how lucky those people were to live and create in such an environment. It is not so easy to enliven our own present moment and make it, too, a landmark of creative (not to say Bohemian) history. And so, there are countless books about Paris between the great European wars of the 20th century. This reader once took an on-line poll that concluded that he, too, would have been much happier listening to gypsy jazz in a Parisian cafe in 1922. So, we fall back on imagination, and the literature of the time, non-fiction, and fiction. One of these is this present novel, in which its author draws four story arcs. Minor characters, maybe, but no less vital. These are unknowns (except for one, who is most clearly based on a real-life person) who move through Paris of 1927, through one day, suffering their losses, lamenting their hopes, and bumping in to countless famous characters: Hemingway, Sylvia Beach, Ravel, Gertrude Stein, Proust, Josephine Baker, Picasso, and others.
They're all here, if you're looking for them. But the novel revolves around the lives of our four background characters. Proust's live-in maid, who feels she betrayed him before he died, having finshed (but not finished editing his epic novel). An unsuccessful artist looking to make a sale. A refugee from the Turkish genocide in Armenia, now a puppeteer in a park. And a journalist mourning his young family after a terrible World War 1 bombing. The book moves through a single day, as each of these characters finds their way through the vibrant streets of the City of Lights, and each through their memories, the stories that feed the drama of their day. It is a dramatic undertaking for an author, and the book succeeds in various ways, some of the episodes dark and moving, others a little pathetic and farcical. When a famous person walks on stage, there is a moment of recognition and the slight feeling that the author is borrowing the fame without adding to the drama. It isn't as though the famous characters are ill-drawn. Indeed, George's work of imagination is engaging. But it also can feel a little bit of a gimick, as if it is merely the thin connections to fame that tie the book together. And yet, George successfully draws these people together in the end, in a subtle and unexpected manner. We get a slice of life in Paris, and a reflection on pain, loss, art and potential.
See Also: [A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway]