Paris Postcards by Guy Thomas Hibbert: book review

Paris Postcards: Short Stories (2018) is a collection of 11 short stories set in Paris, with the central theme: a postcard. Each postcard in each story has a message – for good or bad. The stories span from 1925 to the present day, in a snapshot of history. They are all linked in some way, through time or character or place – but in a subtle way.

From a Russian Count in 1925 to a middle-aged woman in the present day, the stories are of young and old, Parisienne and foreign, and rich and poor.

The collection begins with the mysterious Count Stanislaw Kerensky, exiled from Russia after the Revolution, leaving in receipt of the knowledge that his old comrade Petrovich is alive. Stanny promised to send his friend Andre a postcard with a coded message.

Hermione’s party in 1937, Lucienne in German Occupied Paris in 1943, Elodie and her son in 1963, Didier and Jules in 1997, Jeanne in 2000, Hank in 2006, and Li Ling and Christopher in the present day, it ends with a fifty-year-old divorced woman, off Citalopram for two months, visiting the bouquinistes along the river Seine with their old books and postcards.

The Blue Dress, February 2006, is my favourite story, and the shortest –Hank and his wife Lilian, who is ‘a little forgetful’ are in Paris for their wedding anniversary. She has a collection of vintage Valentine’s Day postcards.

There are various narrators – Andre, Daisy, Serge, George – and it is interesting to find the linkages and connections between stories. The stories are full of secrets and subterfuge, love and loss, and the search for a change of life and fortune. There is much hope, desire, and dreams in the streets of Paris. It’s an enjoyable read.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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