Echoes
Groucho, Harpo, Chico. Photo by Clarence Sinclair Bull/MGM, posted at theguardian.com:
Another new term: “Raw-dogging” — passengers forgoing the modern comforts of flying to stare at either the in-flight map or nothing at all during lengthy trips, no music, no streaming, no snacking, no sleep. Zen?
Headline from nypost.com: “Election officials in all 50 states urged to halt non-citizen voter registration: ‘Time to act is now’.” My hunch is voting forms have already been filled out and hidden.
Born in Donnington Berkshire, England in 1953, Sebastian Faulks is in the midst of a fine literary career, a major player. He earned a degree at Cambridge, worked briefly as a teacher, then became a journalist. Following the success of his second novel, he left journalism and wrote full time. He has written 16 novels and four works of non-fiction. His work was regarded so highly that he was commissioned by the estate of Ian Fleming to write a James Bond novel to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the author’s birth. The result, Devil May Care (2008), was a best seller. In 2013 Faulks was commissioned to continue P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster series and published Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. Given those qualifications, I decided to give Paris Echo a try. Published in 2019, set circa 2016, the narrative follows a male Moroccan immigrant just about to turn 20, and a 31-year-old female American academic researching the lives of women in Nazi-occupied France. By chance they become roommates, odd because the young man, who is essentially killing time, broadening his horizons, constantly riding the Metro, knows virtually nothing about history. One aspect I really enjoyed is the way their lives occasionally intersect without either being aware of it. I’ve always been fascinated by accounts of WWII. Many Parisians behaved abominably back then, collaborating with the Germans, committing atrocities themselves. Relatively few were brought to justice. Readers have to ask themselves: What would I have done in that situation? The main protagonists have contrasting personalities, the woman serious, focused, the man drifting, carefree. I was disappointed that the story never takes off, never rises above interesting. Still, Faulks must be credited with writing a serious novel grounded in reality. The prose and dialogue are solid, accessible. The narrative is filled with unexplained French terms, many of which I didn’t bother to look up or try to figure out. Here are excerpts I cherrypicked: “… frustration, really, was the nature of being alive — attempting to have happiness and finding that there was some glitch in the basic rules of existence that made it impossible.” And: “… there were no polarities of enlightenment and darkness; there were only degrees of ignorance.” 277 users at Amazon have rated Paris Echo, forging to a consensus of 3.8 on a scale of five. I’ll go with three. Faulks appears regularly on British TV and radio. In 2011 the BBC aired a four-part series, Faulks on Fiction, whose focus was British novels. Five of his works have been adapted for either the big or small screen, another is in production. He has received numerous awards. Married since 1989, he is a father of three. Photo from Google Images:
Business continues to be sluggish at the Anti-Inflation Book Shop, despite stellar inventory. My thanks to the woman who bought a Danielle Steel translation in Russian, and to the gentleman who purchased a Chris Rea CD.
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