Paris by the Book

by Liam Callanan

This book is by the author of the popular book The Cloud Atlas.

Some of the reviews of this book describe it as a romance set in the romantic, evocative city of Paris.  This is too simplistic a reading of the book. Some praise it as about a woman finding herself.  Rather, I think it is a tribute to a woman trying to cope and a childish man who doesn't want to grow up.

The book is about a family, two parents and their daughters, but it is largely about the parents.
The parents meet when the mother steals a book from a bookstore.  She is a film studies student fascinated by the film the Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse, which is set in Paris.  The father is a fan of the Madeline books of Ludwig Bemelmans, also set in Paris.  Both would like to get to Paris but finances don't permit.

The couple marry and the man continues to pursue his career as an author. The woman gives up her film aspirations and becomes a speechwriter for a local college.  The husband is not as successful as he would like to be and is very moody.  He often leaves to go off to do writing.  His wife does her best to keep the family together.  One day the husband disappears and does not return.  His wife while searching the house finds a clue in a box of cereal.  She discovers that her husband bought tickets to Paris.  She thinks that must be where he has gone.  She rents out their house and sets off to Paris.
While in Paris she gets a cheque, royalties for a story/book her husband wrote.  She decides to stay in Paris, enrolls her girls in school and makes arrangement to purchase an English language bookstore in Paris with the money they received.

A family friend tells her that police believe her husband died when he took a boat out onto a lake and encourages her to take steps to get him declared legally dead.  The woman and her daughter refuse to believe his is dead.  Particularly since strange things happen, for e.g. she finds one of his books in the bookstore with the words "I'm sorry" written in it, and her daughters think they have seen him at times in Paris.

Near the end of the book the husband does show up.  He tells her he didn't really intend to disappear, he was just in a bad state and didn't want to be hospitalized and drugged.  He tells her he has been watching them in Paris and didn't reconnect because they all seemed happy.  Little did he know how sad all of them were, missing him, not knowing what had happened to him. 

I have to say I found the husband's behaviour frustrating and hard to understand.  I can understand that he got depressed and needed to leave for a while. It seems he just wanted his wife to be as playful,  adoring and unquestioning as she was when they first married.  However, while he seems stuck in his fantasy to be an acclaimed author, she has been worn down by the burden and the reality of running the family and dealing with him and his moods.  In an interview the man said he doesn't believe in writers block, but this is what appears to have happened to him.

While he claims to love his kids how could he just walk away and leave them in limbo?  He says he watched them and they seemed happy without him... I think that is just and excuse for his self-absorption and irresponsibility.  Just as many people fantasize about Paris and its romantic appeal, I think the man and his wife both have childish obsessions with the city, at least when they first meet.

When the husband shows up in Paris he admits he did go back to see his family after his disappearance but by then his wife had found the clue about the airplane tickets to Paris and set off to Paris to find him.  He found the family home had been rented. He was shocked at this, but also not surprised.  It appears he did follow them to Paris but decided to spy on them rather than make contact.  What would have happened if his family had still been in Milwaukee? Would anything be different?  Would he have stayed with his family or left again?  I suspect he would have left again and the fact that his family was gone justified his continuing abandonment of them.

The husband has written a successful novel, a bit like the story of their life except in his book the wife is the author.  He submits the book to a publisher in the wife's name and she gets all the royalties.

The woman does not tell her children that their father is still alive.  It is probably easier for them that way than to try to understand why he has left them.

As the book ends the old woman who was the wife's partner in the bookstore tells the woman she has to leave the store.  The woman goes back to school to study film making.


I found the book hard to take, all the intrigue and coincidences are a bit cheesy.  I found the husband completely unsympathetic and frustrating.  He should have gone to the family and explained his position without making them suffer so long not knowing what had happened to him.  Beyond the story line itself I found the book not all that easy or interesting to read.  Other reviews I have read also commented that it was disappointing, hard to get engaged with.

I think the characters disappointment that life didn't turn out to be entirely the way they wanted it to be was lame.... this happens to most people as they have children and their lives have to adjust to family life.  Not everyone has to give up on their dreams but they do have to make accommodations for the changes that occur in their lives. Just as life doesn't always work out the way we thought it would, Paris probably doesn't live up to people's romantic notions about the city.

The way the book ends, with the wife saying she doesn't really read anymore, might be a hint that the author himself is suffering some of the angst, and writer's block of the woman's husband.  I guess time will tell....