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    Paris: The Novel
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    Paris: The Novel
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    Paris: The Novel
    Ebook1,175 pages18 hours

    Paris: The Novel

    By Edward Rutherfurd

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    From Edward Rutherfurd, the grand master of the historical novel, comes a dazzling epic about the magnificent city of Paris. Moving back and forth in time, the story unfolds through intimate and thrilling tales of self-discovery, divided loyalty, and long-kept secrets. As various characters come of age, seek their fortunes, and fall in and out of love, the novel follows nobles who claim descent from the hero of the celebrated poem The Song of Roland; a humble family that embodies the ideals of the French Revolution; a pair of brothers from the slums behind Montmartre, one of whom works on the Eiffel Tower as the other joins the underworld near the Moulin Rouge; and merchants who lose everything during the reign of Louis XV, rise again in the age of Napoleon, and help establish Paris as the great center of art and culture that it is today. With Rutherfurd’s unrivaled blend of impeccable research and narrative verve, this bold novel brings the sights, scents, and tastes of the City of Light to brilliant life.

    Praise for Paris

    “A tour de force . . . [Edward Rutherfurd’s] most romantic and richly detailed work of fiction yet.”—Bookreporter

    “Fantastic . . . as grand and engrossing as Paris itself.”—Historical Novels Review

    “This saga is filled with historical detail and a huge cast of characters, fictional and real, spanning generations and centuries. But Paris, with its art, architecture, culture and couture, is the undisputed main character.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    “Both Paris, the venerable City of Light, and Rutherfurd, the undisputed master of the multigenerational historical saga, shine in this sumptuous urban epic.”—Booklist

    “There is suspense, intrigue and romance around every corner.”—Asbury Park Press
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateApr 23, 2013
    ISBN9780385535311
    Unavailable
    Paris: The Novel
    Author

    Edward Rutherfurd

    Edward Rutherfurd nació en Salisbury, Inglaterra. Se diplomó en historia y literatura por Cambridge. Es el autor de Sarum, El bosque, Londres, París, Nueva York, Rusia, Rebeldes de Irlanda, Príncipes de Irlanda y China. En todas sus novelas Rutherfurd nos ofrece una rica panorámica de las ciudades más atractivas del mundo a través de personajes ficticios y reales que se ponen al servicio de una investigación minuciosa en lo que ya se ha convertido el sello particular de autor.

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    Reviews for Paris

    4/5

    283 ratings30 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Classic Rutherford, immersive, rich in detail, working within the arc of time he has selected with references to other milestones that impact his narrative. Background provided for the Eiffel tower, the revolution and other iconic points of reference, norms of the day and interesting characters, all with the heartbeat of Paris the city. Loved the book.
    • 4/5
      As all Rutherford works are, Paris is a sweeping masterpiece of history as well as character. The jumping timeline was a bit disconcerting at times, but as a whole it made sense, some times being far less developed than others. Thoroughly enjoyed!
    • 4/5
      Historical novel that takes you through 800 years of the city of Paris. Over 800 pages and I did read it all because I was curious about the families the author developed. The book was narrated in a factual context and I found myself not getting attached to any of the characters. Rather a dry narration but I found the author described certain events from a different perspective and I learned from that so that's why I gave it 4 stars.
    • 4/5
      Since I had good memories of Sarum which I read 20 Aug 1994, and of London, which I read 10 May 2008, and since I have a huge interest in French history, when I noticed this book I wanted to read it. It, in the usual Rutherfurd manner,, covers events in French history from the Middle Ages up to post World War Two times, and the account is often gripping and I found myself caught up in the events related--even if on reflection they were a bit far-fetched. One becomes interested in the characters and the good ones usuaolly do all right and so the book is fun to read most of the time.
    • 5/5
      Didn't want to put it down! I've enjoyed several novels by Rutherfurd.....I teach French and loved seeing the history through the lives of interesting characters.
    • 5/5
      From the 1300's to the 1960's, the author tells the story of the City of Paris through the eyes of six families. The LeSourd's are revolutionaries, street people, working people always enemies of the aristocracy. DeCygne is a family of aristocrats whose sole purpose is to fight for and uphold the king. The Renards and Blanchards are bourgeoisie. The Renards are Protestant and the Blanchards are Catholic, sources of conflict as their families intertwine. Thomas Gason and his brother Luc are craftsmen; Thomas is an iron worker who works on the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, but his brother Luc works by his wits making friends with and using people to his own means. Jacob is a Jew who family converts to Catholicism for a while for safety.The members of these families are interwoven throughout the story but as time changes their positions change What once was unheard of becomes the normal and those who were once enemies fight side by side. The story takes the families through the French Revolution, WWI and WWII as well as the cultural development of the city.Absolutely loved this book and although there were occasional coincidences which stretch belief, overall it was so believable and intriguing. Famous people such as DeGaulle, Hemingway, and Picasso sometimes as background and sometimes as real people.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It is definitely a historical drama, a little too much history for me, but the history buffs will truly enjoy it. Others will as well.
    • 2/5
      I remember reading Rutherfurd's first historical epic, Sarum, and being swept away by the story of Salisbury, England and its families through the centuries. Since then, Rutherfurd has written several more of these historical novels, about Russia, Ireland, London and New York.Rutherfurd has developed a sort of formula for these novels. He takes a few families and follows their generations through the centuries. The families tend to be from varying levels of society, so that their stories can give a fuller view of life in the particular location of the story. Different family members will be involved in some way with key events in the location's history, and quite often the families have interactions or relationships with each other throughout the history.In this book, the families are the highborn de Cygnes; the Le Sourds, pitted against the de Cygnes again and again throughout the ages; the laborer/artisan Gascons; the commerce-minded Blanchards; the Jewish Jacobs. For some reason not clear to me, Rutherfurd has chosen to skip around in time, rather than follow a chronological order. Not only do you jump from one set of characters to another from chapter to chapter, you may jump forward or backward in time.This jumping around makes it difficult to develop the characters. Just as you're starting to get a picture of one set of characters, the chapter ends. I suppose that's the tradeoff for a novel that spans centuries and that focuses on the history of the place. The place becomes the protagonist and all the humans become side characters. Well, OK, if that's the deal, then I can accept it if I love the treatment of the protagonist. But I can't say that I did. Paris did not come alive for me in this book.The sweeping sociopolitical events and movements in French/Parisian history are handled in very broad strokes and in a labored and pedantic way. You get a clue as to the style right from the get-go, when the history of the Paris Commune is given to us by way of a turgid monologue delivered by a mother to her son. I know this background has to be provided somehow, but the way this read, I could imagine Rutherfurd's early draft saying "[insert history here]." I couldn't help but compare it to Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, where there is also a lot of historical information that is told by way of conversations, or one character telling another the history. I had just been listening to the audiobook and a character, Jack Shaftoe, tells his horse (really) some fairly lengthy history and it was both entertaining and educational; a huge contrast to this book.Interspersed with the broad-brush historical descriptions, Rutherfurd focuses in on some selected events in a more personal way. One of these is his focus on the building of the Eiffel Tower, and Thomas Gascon's work on both it and the Statue of Liberty that M. Eiffel designed and Parisians built as a gift to the United States. This was probably the most dynamic and lively part of the book, and Thomas Gascon the most dimensional character.Unfortunately, that only tends to emphasize how paper-thin the characterization is in nearly all the other cases. People behave in ways that Rutherfurd lays no foundation for; presumably it's just convenient for his plot. The characters seem like dolls that Rutherfurd uses to act out his stories, not like real people. I just didn't care about any of them. That became painfully clear in the middle of the book, when there is a long chapter about a love/social position triangle. I wasn't invested in the characters, because they hadn't been brought to life. The same is true for almost the entire 20th century, when Rutherfurd inexplicably plunges the story into a ridiculous soap opera, complete with love triangles, an adoptee searching for her birth family, sexual intrigue and so on.What's more, most of this could have been placed almost anywhere. Paris is just window dressing. When a character goes to work as a model for Coco Chanel, we read virtually nothing about her work or Chanel. In other words, our protagonist, the city of Paris, is depicted as superficially as the human characters. An exception to this is when we arrive at World War II. Suddenly, the story becomes very Parisian and far less superficial. It's a shame the reader has to wait until the last 100 pages of the book for this transformation.It's disappointing that Rutherfurd managed to write such a lackluster book about one of the world's most fascinating cities. I would have given the book 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 stars, but because the World War II story was good, I'm rounding up to three stars.Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.
    • 3/5
      I'm not quit done yet but I'm struggling to keep going. The writing is just so unelegant and straightforward. Sometimes it's even condescening--can't the writer give the reader the benefit of the doubt that they might understand a French phrase or even a difficult English vocaublary word, and not define it? Can't he be more subtle and let the reader figure out things on their own? The characters are flat and uninteresting. The plotlines are predictable. The multi-generational story, the glimpses of Paris (my favorite city) throughout time, and the bits of real history are what makes the book interesting, but after a few hundred pages even those things are wearing thin. I don't know if that's enough to carry me through the next few hundred pages. There doesn't really seem to be an overarching plot or theme so I don't know that actually finishing the book will be rewarding at all.
    • 4/5
      It took me awhile to get into the book, but once I did and figured out his rhythm I totally enjoyed it = particularly as I was visiting Paris toward the end of the book and could read along and be there in person as well as in book.
    • 3/5
      This novel is about the sagas of a few families and the history of Paris. Unfortunately, the novel skips back and forth in time rather than proceeding in a chronological manner. The skipping back and forth makes an otherwise enjoyable story hard to follow.
    • 4/5
      I have been a fan of Rutherfurd's sweeping centuries-spanning historical sagas for twenty years since I first discovered Sarum and Russka. Paris followed his usual hallmarks of following several interconnected families in different centuries, but I didn't like the structure of this one. Instead of a chronological narrative giving a sense of the sweep of time and of the generations and the development of the city, there was a central narrative starting from 1875 that occupied most of the book, punctuated fairly infrequently by quite short digressions into past centuries covering the doings of the 1875 et seq's ancestors. I found this less than satisfactory as it meant we got to see much less of Paris's earlier history than I would have liked. Only the short interludes covering the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve (where an eight year old Catholic boy saves a five year old Huguenot after her parents are killed) and the Reign of Terror (where a doctor tries to save a liberal-minded aristocratic couple from the guillotine) really stuck in the mind, but then we were quickly back to the more modern narrative. I would have much preferred the format of the author's other novels. That said, the usual eclectic and fascinating galaxy of characters are all present, and the long chapter dealing with the Occupation was a brilliantly gripping piece of writing.
    • 4/5
      I was ready to be blown away by this book. Paris: a multi-generational account of several socially different families over the ages from the 1200s to the 1960s through horrific political and religious wars. I have found Rutherford's other works engrossing: Russka and London especially. So I opened this book with anticipation which unfortunately did not materialize. Granted, there is a lot to learn about the history of the City of Lights from the novel. I found however, that there were many places in the characters' interaction with the history which seemed a bit too predictable and overdone. I had to constanatly go back to the Family Trees in the Introduction as so many characters were added every few chapters while Rutherford shifted his time frames back and forth throughout the ages. It became confusing which generation was being highlighted some of the time as the names were so very similar. The foundation of these books, the generations of people who live and love in the same places, is a very moving and dramatic formula. I enjoyed the book but it will not be one I keep on my shelves for a second read.
    • 2/5
      I remember reading Rutherfurd's first historical epic, Sarum, and being swept away by the story of Salisbury, England and its families through the centuries. Since then, Rutherfurd has written several more of these historical novels, about Russia, Ireland, London and New York.Rutherfurd has developed a sort of formula for these novels. He takes a few families and follows their generations through the centuries. The families tend to be from varying levels of society, so that their stories can give a fuller view of life in the particular location of the story. Different family members will be involved in some way with key events in the location's history, and quite often the families have interactions or relationships with each other throughout the history.In this book, the families are the highborn de Cygnes; the Le Sourds, pitted against the de Cygnes again and again throughout the ages; the laborer/artisan Gascons; the commerce-minded Blanchards; the Jewish Jacobs. For some reason not clear to me, Rutherfurd has chosen to skip around in time, rather than follow a chronological order. Not only do you jump from one set of characters to another from chapter to chapter, you may jump forward or backward in time.This jumping around makes it difficult to develop the characters. Just as you're starting to get a picture of one set of characters, the chapter ends. I suppose that's the tradeoff for a novel that spans centuries and that focuses on the history of the place. The place becomes the protagonist and all the humans become side characters. Well, OK, if that's the deal, then I can accept it if I love the treatment of the protagonist. But I can't say that I did. Paris did not come alive for me in this book.The sweeping sociopolitical events and movements in French/Parisian history are handled in very broad strokes and in a labored and pedantic way. You get a clue as to the style right from the get-go, when the history of the Paris Commune is given to us by way of a turgid monologue delivered by a mother to her son. I know this background has to be provided somehow, but the way this read, I could imagine Rutherfurd's early draft saying "[insert history here]." I couldn't help but compare it to Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, where there is also a lot of historical information that is told by way of conversations, or one character telling another the history. I had just been listening to the audiobook and a character, Jack Shaftoe, tells his horse (really) some fairly lengthy history and it was both entertaining and educational; a huge contrast to this book.Interspersed with the broad-brush historical descriptions, Rutherfurd focuses in on some selected events in a more personal way. One of these is his focus on the building of the Eiffel Tower, and Thomas Gascon's work on both it and the Statue of Liberty that M. Eiffel designed and Parisians built as a gift to the United States. This was probably the most dynamic and lively part of the book, and Thomas Gascon the most dimensional character.Unfortunately, that only tends to emphasize how paper-thin the characterization is in nearly all the other cases. People behave in ways that Rutherfurd lays no foundation for; presumably it's just convenient for his plot. The characters seem like dolls that Rutherfurd uses to act out his stories, not like real people. I just didn't care about any of them. That became painfully clear in the middle of the book, when there is a long chapter about a love/social position triangle. I wasn't invested in the characters, because they hadn't been brought to life. The same is true for almost the entire 20th century, when Rutherfurd inexplicably plunges the story into a ridiculous soap opera, complete with love triangles, an adoptee searching for her birth family, sexual intrigue and so on.What's more, most of this could have been placed almost anywhere. Paris is just window dressing. When a character goes to work as a model for Coco Chanel, we read virtually nothing about her work or Chanel. In other words, our protagonist, the city of Paris, is depicted as superficially as the human characters. An exception to this is when we arrive at World War II. Suddenly, the story becomes very Parisian and far less superficial. It's a shame the reader has to wait until the last 100 pages of the book for this transformation.It's disappointing that Rutherfurd managed to write such a lackluster book about one of the world's most fascinating cities. I would have given the book 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 stars, but because the World War II story was good, I'm rounding up to three stars.Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.
    • 1/5
      Interesting tale exploring the history of Paris, with many details of historical significance. Structure and sequence of tale left a lot to be desired. Couldn't follow the sequence of characters. Jumped backwards and forward with in logical reason for doing so. Finally read it for just the historical parts.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book. I like this type of sweeping historical style. While not heavily descriptive, it gives you a feel times. It gives you the events and the politics and the reactions of the characters. The book is not in chronological order and it does skip around some. When you read this one pay attention to the chapter titles. They tell you what year you are in. The book included many facts unknown to me. This is a painless way to learn about Paris. I do admit that 3/4 of the way into it I felt a little bogged down, but I kept reading and the end ties everything together well. My favorite part was about the construction of the Eiffel Tower. This book is about Paris, but it is also about relationships between friends and families. This is not for the faint of heart and people who enjoy a little light reading. This is a heavy-duty book!! You should not be intimidated by it. This is a good book for when you have a chunk of time and want to escape for a while. I think that this book portrayed Paris in a pretty clean way. There are books that have given us a look at a darker Paris full of crime, prostitution and violence. This version seems like a bright shiny Paris. I give this book a 4 out 5 stars.
    • 5/5
      I love Paris, so was immediately drawn to this book. Through the intertwined stories of four very different families, it tells the history of Paris. From aristocrats with country mansions, to the building of the Eiffel Tower and the rough life in the Maquis, the struggle of Siege and the Commune, through to occupation of WW2, the characters are vivid, the stories have all human life and the historical aspects are fascinating.I loved this book - all 764 pages of it!
    • 2/5
      I shouldn't actually consider this read as I returned the book to the library without finishing. I really did not care for this book, which is disappointing. I love Edward Rutherford's other books. This one jumped back and forth in time, which was confusing, and it dwelt way too much on romance. I really couldn't care less which of 4 suitors a character was going to marry. That took up an entire chapter... It's too bad, as Paris is one of favorite cities. Guess I'll have to get Parisian historical fiction elsewhere.
    • 4/5
      Very good, but long-winded in places.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book. Rutherfurd's best. Better than Sarum and far better than New York.
    • 5/5
      This is another of E. Rutherfurd's epic novels of historical fiction. I enjoyed it thoroughly, except that I was a bit puzzled (and slightly annoyed), though, to see that the author decided to forgo his usual format (like in "Russka" and "London", for instance) of chronological order of events, and so the chapters in "Paris" were jumping from 1800s to 1200s, then back and forth again. I couldn't see the value of that.
    • 2/5
      2.5 starsLike many of Rutherfurd’s books, this is historical fiction that takes place over centuries, this one in Paris. I listened to the audio and it was unfortunate it wasn’t in chronological order, like the others by him I’ve read. It was harder to follow as it jumped around. The storyline I found the most interesting was the building of the Eiffel Tower. Next to that, parts of the WWII storyline were good. Otherwise, I kind of got lost in the rest and wasn’t quite sure what was happening. I don’t know if much time was spent on Napoleon or the French Revolution, though they were both mentioned a few times, but if there was a longer storyline around those, I missed them. Being such a long book over many generations (and the back and forth in time didn’t help), it was hard for me to figure out who was who and how they were related. When I thought I had it, he’d flip to another time period and characters, then by the time we came back, I’d have forgotten.
    • 4/5
      PARIS delivers finely tuned tales of greatly evolving characters.Thomas Garcon and Eiffel are among my favorites.While enjoying many of the often too lengthy stories,the back and forth time changes gave more confusion than enlightenment -So many Rolands!
    • 3/5
      What to say, what to say. La Belle Époque is one of my favorite historical periods along with the Regency period, so of course I was happy that was the French period Rutherfurd chose to start this story off with. I am a big fan of the attention to historical detail Rutherfurd brings to his stories. I was particularly captivated when the story focused on a younger Thomas Gascon and the construction of the Eiffel Tower. The inclusion of fictionalized appearances by Hemingway and Monet was also a delight to read. The downside, for me – because, there is a downside to this behemoth epic tale – is the characters. I found the characters representing the 6 families to be rather flat and under-developed. I also found it highly annoying that Rutherfurd seemed to be more focused on flying the reading back and forth through time and ricocheting around the families that I ended up being a bit frustrated by the whole experience. Would a more linear progression have worked better, given the fact that Rutherfurd was already wrestling with making interesting connections happen between the families? Possibly. It is definitely an ambitious novel for any writer to tackle on the scale that is Rutherfurd’s stock and trade – Paris spans an enormous time range of 1260 AD to the late 1960’s – but ambitious doesn’t always equate into a spellbinding or enthralling read. I especially hated it when Rutherfurd proceeded to wipe out what I thought were some key characters with nothing more than a few emotionally-devoid sentences, like they were an afterthought that needed to be mentioned just to ensure no loose ends were left hanging.Overall, as much as I enjoyed my read of Sarum many, many moons ago, I found Paris to be a story that left me with just an “meh” feeling. Maybe my tastes have changed. I still have [London] waiting for me on my TBR pile so I will give Rutherfurd another chance, but not right away. I can only recommend Paris to readers that may have an interest in the building of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty or a Parisian point of view of the two world wars.
    • 4/5
      Great story threaded around the generations of several families in Paris and France. Difficult to recall who is who at the start of chapters set in different centuries but once in you remember.
    • 3/5
      I had enjoyed the book “New York”, by this same author, and had hoped to enjoy this book as much, but I am sad to admit I was disappointed. Although it is fact filled, the tale woven by the author seemed a bit contrived, way too long and contained far too much extraneous detail. We learn about several families whose lives continue to intersect over more than 5 centuries, from the mid 1400’s to 1968. Often, because the story moves back and forth in time, sometimes without warning, it is hard to remember them all, and even sometimes, harder to place which character is being featured.Essentially, for me, the tale introduced and largely followed these families: the Gascons, the Le Sourds, the Le Cynges and the Blanchards. The historic rise of Paris, from decadence to the modern cultural center it has become today, is told over more than 800 pages. I listened to the audio, and if truth be told, it is a perfect cure for insomnia. I fell asleep several times as I listened. It just got too tedious after awhile. It took fully one third of the book before all of the characters and their connection to each other became clear enough for me to completely follow the thread of the story. Perhaps it should have been a series of books, each featuring a century or so, rather than one book trying to cover it all. It often felt like a subject was incomplete, possibly needed more detail, while others rambled on excessively. Of course, I did have to keep reminding myself that it was not history, but rather historic fiction. I just felt that the tapestry of the narrative was not knitted together as coherently as it could have been.However, all of the important moments of Paris history are covered, even though the fictional story sometimes overpowered the reality. We learn of the courtesans, the brothels, the monarchies, the influence of the church, the Protestant massacre, the storming of the Bastille, the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the building of Notre Dame, Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley’s visit to Paris, Jean D’Arc, Richelieu, Robespierre, Monet and Chagall, Hugo and Zola, Hitler, Anti-Semitism, the Vel d’Hiv roundup, Viet Nam, Napoleon and Josephine, the aristocracy and the hoi polloi, the socialists and the communists, Hemingway, Ben Franklin, Lindbergh, Picasso, the Dreyfus affair, Luther Calvin, Rodin, Versailles, the Bois de Boulogne, The French Resistance, etc. I could go on and on. There were so many people and events covered, one can understand why the tale became overwhelming at times. Then, to make it more confusing, the author jumped from century to century, back and forth, without warning, as well. For me, the most interesting part of the book was the story elaborating the French resistance during WWII. On the whole, I think the author simply tried to weave too many pieces of the city’s background together, without really developing all that many of them. Except for the building of the Eiffel Tower which introduced the reader to many of the characters, and the details surrounding the events leading up to and including both World Wars, the book sometimes felt sketchy. I felt almost as if the author had prepared a list of events he wished to include and then constructed a narrative around them, perhaps less concerned with the accurate history than the creation of the tale needed to introduce it. The international scene emerged on the Paris stage and Paris grew into an international, cultural center for musicians, artists and writers. Anyone who was anyone wanted to be there, if not for the ambience, then for the decadence. For every loose women and unscrupulous man there was a brilliant author, artist, musician and thinker waiting in the wings. Innovation had its birthplace. Over the five centuries featured, culture, technology, politics, finance and industry, advanced at breakneck speed. Rodin’s “Thinker” embodied the mood in Paris. It is said if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it, and it would seem with current events today, in 2014, we have learned very little. There is still distrust and strife, hunger and poverty around the world, and warfare is everywhere one looks. Will there ever be peace?
    • 5/5
      Edward Rutherfurd’s book is “The Novel” of Paris. Like Hemingway’s memoir of Paris, Rutherfurd has shown Paris to be “A Moveable Feast.” But, instead of presenting the life of a writer’s associations with the city, he describes the history of Paris from 1261 to 1968. The real and fictional characters bring the city to life as generations live through centuries of artistic and cultural development, architectural expansion, class revolution, political maneuvering, and social relationships. Many important figures in the history of France and others attracted to the city because of its promise of power and romance are depicted in Paris. Even a fictionalized Hemingway and his first wife Hadley play a role in the novel. The historical novel is written so that the history of Paris seems almost secondary to the stories of the characters. Yet, the history is nicely detailed and the reader feels the atmosphere of the city through the activities of the interesting characters regardless of the century. The novel is quite lengthy (over 800 pages) and it took me a month to read it. But, I greatly enjoyed the fictional and actual accounts of Paris events and people and highly recommend the novel.
    • 5/5
      The first remark I need to make about Paris by Edward Rutherfurd is that it is not written in a linear time frame. New York, the other book by Rutherfurd I have read, is linear and for that reason I found it easier to keep track of the characters. This book, like New York, follows a few families through the centuries, so the focus might be on the young adult years of a single person during one chapter and on his or her father's early life in the next. I noticed this point was made in many of the other reviews, but it is important enough for me to mention it again.My wife and I went to Paris about a year and a half ago. It was my first trip to Europe, so I was excited to learn more about the city I had visited. The novel did not disappoint. During our trip my favorite section of Paris was Montmartre, the mountain where the Sacré-Cœur Basilica is located. In Rutherfurd's book a working class family named Gascon lives there. We get to follow Thomas's work on the Statue of Liberty and also on the Eiffel Tower and then we get to follow his brother Luc's less than reputable life.This is historical fiction, so some of the characters are based on the lives of real people while others are created for the story. The kings were interesting, or course, but I really enjoyed Thomas' relationship with Monsieur Eiffel and the discussions they had about the engineering of the tower. Also, Montmartre is interesting in ways I didn't realize when we visited it. The mountain consists primarily of gypsum, from which plaster can be made (plaster of Paris). Gypsum is a soft material and is valuable enough to motivate the creation of numerous mines. For these reasons the mountain wasn't the best place to build a huge cathedral. The builders had to establish a foundation by digging a number of giant shafts and filling them with concrete. As a result the comment was made that Montmartre isn't holding up the church. It's the church that's holding up Montmartre.I enjoyed learning about the history of the Louvre and Versailles, but what was more fascinating to me was the history of bigotry in the city. Antisemitism was prevalent in Paris through the centuries and there were other forms of bigotry as well. The hatred between Protestants and Catholics created a great amount of violence and death. France is a Catholic country. The Inquisition went on within its boundaries for centuries. Rutherfurd does an excellent job of showing his readers the results of this political decision on individuals. And he shows antisemitism through the lives of the Jacob family. Sometimes the bigotries are subtle and sometimes they are massive.As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I didn't think this novel was put together as well as Rutherfurd's New York, but it's still a five star book.Steve Lindahl - author of White Horse Regressions and Motherless Soul
    • 4/5
      As a high school student, one of my first “favorite” authors was James Michener. After reading Centennial, I ended up reading virtually all of his work, spending many years being entertained and educated as a result of his numerous historical fiction works. Many years later, I stumbled upon Edward Rutherfurd’s Russka and was vividly reminded of the earlier Michener works. Since then, I have read most of Rutherfurd’s novels, with generally very favorable results.Just as he did with Sarum, London, Dublin and New York, in Paris Rutherfurd seeks to give a broad historical overview of the City of Lights. Unfortunately, I felt this to be one of his weaker efforts. Other reviewers have noted the irregular, non-linear method used by the author in Paris. While I have no problem with different story threads, in different time frames, I see no rhyme nor reason in the way the author skips forward and back. For example, he begins a story in 1883 Paris, switches back to 13th century Paris for a short chapter, then returns to 1887 Paris. Nothing that happened in the 13th century story had any bearing or relation to the characters or families in the 19th century story. Jumping back and forth simply acts to make the reader lose touch and familiarity with the characters in the various vignettes.In addition, while the author seeks to “hit all the high spots” in Parisian history, in doing so he gives short shrift to several of the defining moments in not just Parisian or French, but world history. The French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon are given only the briefest attention. In effect, about 90% of the novel occupies the time frame of 1885-1965. In my opinion, the novel is poorly organized and even worse, fails to accurately tell the story of the city of Paris.
    • 2/5
      I really tried to like this, but I didn't. The timeline was all over the place, there were way too many characters and none of them stood out to me, I couldn't tell who I'd already read about and who was new. And the last 100 pages being solely of the war was just too much. Nothing seemed to fit, though I did like Mr. Eiffel.