Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks: book review

Paris Echo (2019) is set in Paris in contemporary times.

The novel is narrated by two people: one is 31 year old Hannah from America who has a grant to study the oral (taped) history of women during the French Resistance; the other is 19 year old Tariq from Morocco who is in search of his French-born mother Hanan, born in the 1950s, who left the family when he was young.

The novel begins with Tariq and ends with Hannah. Both Hannah and Tariq search the past for answers to the present. Their lives intersect on the streets of Paris.

Just as Hannah learns about the lives of the French Resistance women, Tariq learns about himself: “In all the long months I’d spent in the city of Paris I’d discovered through the people I’d met – through Clémence, Hannah, Victor, through Hasim and Jamal, through Juliette … how many different ways there were of being alive.”

Tariq is about to leave Paris when Hannah’s friend, Justin, requests a favour. Hannah’s grant funding is coming to an end when Justin requests a favour. What does Justin want from both of them and should they help him?

This is an interesting novel about Paris and life, from two points of view, and two periods in time.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: 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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