Paris Echo: A Novel

By Sebastian Faulks

“Cunningly crafted. . . . France’s unquiet histories are brought to life by a master storyteller.” —Financial Times (UK)

A story of resistance, complicity, and an unlikely, transformative friendship, set in Paris, from internationally bestselling novelist Sebastian Faulks.

American historian Hannah intends to immerse herself in World War II research in Paris, wary of paying much attention to the city where a youthful misadventure once left her dejected. But a chance encounter with Tariq, a Moroccan teenager whose visions of the City of Lights as a world of opportunity and rebirth starkly contrast with her own, disrupts her plan.

Hannah agrees to take Tariq in as a lodger, forming an unexpected connection with the young man. Yet as Tariq begins to assimilate into the country he risked his life to enter, he realizes that its dark past and current ills are far more complicated than he’d anticipated. And Hannah, diving deeper into her work on women’s lives in Nazi-occupied Paris, uncovers a shocking piece of history that threatens to dismantle her core beliefs. Soon they each must question which sacrifices are worth their happiness and what, if anything, the tumultuous past century can teach them about the future.

From the sweltering streets of Tangier to deep beneath Paris via the Metro, from the affecting recorded accounts of women in German-occupied France and into the future through our hopes for these characters, Paris Echo offers a tough and poignant story of injustices and dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Nov 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781250305640

Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks is the author of ten novels. They include the UK number one bestseller A Week in December; Charlotte Gray, which was made into a film starring Cate Blanchett; and the classic Birdsong, which was recently adapted for television. In 2008, he was invited to write a James Bond novel, Devil May Care, to mark the centenary of Ian Fleming. He lives in London with his wife and their three children.

Book preview

ONE

Maison Blanche

I was taking a pee in the bathroom when I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My face looked so beautiful that I turned to look more closely, spraying the tiles round the toilet in my hurry. I shook my zib and put it back inside my boxers so I could study my face. It was like someone had drawn a faint shadow beneath the cheekbones, then put a touch of mascara on my lashes. The eyes had a depth I’d never seen before. I put my head to one side and smiled, then furrowed my brow as though I was being serious, but the eyes stayed the same—twinkling with a kind of humor and experience. This was the face of someone old beyond my years.

How could it be I’d never noticed before just how beautiful I was? Not regular handsome maybe like an old-time film star and not indie blank like a modern one. More a mix of soul and sexiness. With noble bones.

I flipped the glass to magnifying and back to normal. I held a hand mirror up to turn the reflection on itself, so it sat right-way-on. I backed against the wall, then went fisheye close. It made no difference. True, I’d smoked a little kif, but only a little, which was all I liked, and I’d had a Coke to keep my sugar level up (a tip from a boy in my year). I felt happy to think this person was me. No harm could come to someone who looked like that. The ways of peace and righteousness were ours. Not to mention soft-skinned girls and travel to distant places.

We stared into one another’s eyes for a few more minutes.

Then he spoke.

He said, You got to get out, man. You gotta get out.

I felt myself nodding in agreement.

Because I’d known this anyway, for quite a while. There was nothing shocking in what he said, it was more of a relief.

Go now.

I will. Any day now.

*   *   *

We lived just outside the medina, the old town, in a whitewashed house. There was another family on the ground floor, but an outside staircase led to our front door. We had the top two floors and a roof terrace with a view towards the sea. My stepmother used to hang the washing up there, which pissed my father off. How can I bring people home when they have to sit next to a row of wet shirts? I had nothing against my stepmother except that she was not my mother. That, and the fact that she always repeated herself. Once she’d locked on to a piece of news or a point of view, she couldn’t let it go. All our problems are caused by the Arabs of the Gulf, especially the Saudis, she told us one January. In September she was still saying this like something she’d just stumbled on.

In the middle of the terrace was a taifor, a kind of low table. It had a woven cloth, orange and red, and small shiny discs that reflected the sun. On it was a box of cigarettes and colored glasses for tea. My father asked men he hoped would invest in his business to come up and admire the view while he unlocked his supply of whiskey. He offered it round with a leer that made me feel sick. There were tons of places in town you could buy liquor. Some of them had only boxes of tissues or cat food in the window, but everyone knew you couldn’t run a specialist tissue shop. You only had to go a few paces in, past the Kleenex, and there were rows of Johnnie Walker and Glenmorangie above the lager and Moroccan wine.

Then my father told me to go and do some studying. Down in my room at the back of the house, I opened my books. I was studying economics, though studying may be too strong a word. True, I’d done well at school when I was young, but it was only because I was good at languages. I’d learned French from my mother, who was half French herself. Her father was from a French settler family in Algeria—one of those they called pieds noirs, or black feet, because the original ones (a hundred years before) had had shiny leather shoes. Normally the generations of settlers married others of their own, French people, but my grandfather took a liking to an Algerian woman in Oran (Algerian Granny) and they were married, though in what religion I don’t know. They moved to Morocco and then to Paris, where my mother, Hanan, was born one day in the early fifties. I don’t know why they had such itchy feet. Maybe they saw trouble coming in Algeria. I guess the Arab name was a gesture from my French grandfather to his Algerian wife now they were stuck in Paris. Hanan, any dictionary will tell you, means mercy or clemency, so maybe he was trying to be nice.

It was in Paris that Hanan, my mother, was brought up and where perhaps she should have stayed. But in her early thirties she went to Morocco on a visit to some cousins and it was there she had the misfortune to meet and marry Malik Zafar, a would-be businessman, who, in 1986, became my father.

My mother died when I was ten. Or maybe I was nine. I wasn’t aware at the time how ill she was and went off to school one day telling her I hoped her cold would be better by the evening. She did look thin and had trouble speaking. I was later told she had had cancer of the esophagus, though I hardly knew what either word meant. Her legacy was my ability to speak French.

For a time, I went to the American School of Tangier, where the lessons were all in English and the girls wore Western clothes. There were daily doses of classical Arabic, as well, but it got too expensive for the son of a flaky businessman. I was sent instead to a school in the Ville Nouvelle, where I got distracted, stopped reading and only just scraped into college at the end of it.

And at college there were more girls. There was also a woman who taught politics, Miss Aziz. She had hair so black it had a purple glow in the light that came through the lecture-room windows. It was thick, with a slight wave, chopped off just above the shoulder. Like other women, she wore trousers most of the time, but once she wore a black skirt to the knee with a white shirt and three rows of big red beads. Towards the end of class, I noticed that a thin strip of white lace had slipped below the hem of the skirt and settled on the black nylon that covered her legs.

We were all majoring in economics. It was a dull subject, but my father made me do it. Miss Aziz’s politics class was a compulsory module in the course and it had a bit of history in it too. One day she told us about the wars of the last century and how the Europeans came to North Africa. She talked about the colonizers as though she wasn’t sure they were quite human. They were cultured all right, the way she told it, but they were addicted to killing in a way that no number of symphonies could make up for.

All this was new to me. I didn’t know exactly when the Europeans had first come to my country or what they wanted from us. But they’d left a lot behind in the names of boulevards, squares and churches. Listening to Miss Aziz describe the Spanish and the French as creatures of a slightly different species, I wondered if this was how they’d seen us, too, when they first arrived in North Africa—primitive bandits on a coastal strip above an endless desert. Bandits with religion.

Miss Aziz, at first glance, seemed to do the right things. She was patient with the questions of the class, and when Dr. Ahmed, the head of department, put his head round the door and asked her for a word she placed her book facedown on the desk and hurried after him. But what was different about her was that she seemed to carry a world in her head that was not the world we knew. She never returned an essay late and she was polite to Hamid, the toothless janitor who swept the courtyard while the rest of us just laughed at his fat ass when he wasn’t sitting on it. And I can’t imagine Miss A. ever raised her voice in the staff room. So why did she give off this sense of rebellion?

Laila, my girlfriend, noticed the same thing. She used to call Miss Aziz the Messenger. It was the name of an American television show in which an average family had adopted a boy who turned out to be an alien. It was a comedy aimed at children, but it was a cult at our college. The kids in the family were always begging to be taken away to his home planet, but the Messenger, who was like an ordinary boy except for two extra fingers (and some telekinetic powers), was too grateful to the mom and dad for rescuing him to take the children away, even on a day trip. For all I know, it was a hidden message, sponsored by some religious group—however shit your life is, you’ve got to keep believing; don’t run away.

While my father poured his whiskey down the throats of his guests (they never invested, they just drank), I sat on my bed and opened a course book. I was bored. Who cares about history, even if Miss Aziz is teaching it? What’s the point of remembering stuff that happened before you were born? We weren’t remembering it anyway. We hadn’t been there—neither had our teachers, nor anyone else in the world—so we couldn’t remember it. What we were doing was imagining it.… And what was the point of that?

If I wasn’t distracted by thoughts of escape, it was by thoughts of Laila. In my room, pretending to study income distribution, I used to send her text messages on the fancy phone she’d given me when her father bought her a new one. Sometimes she sent me back a picture of herself, playing with her dog or drinking Fanta on the veranda of her house.

I hadn’t slept with Laila. I was nineteen, and I hadn’t slept with anyone. When she first arrived at college, I’m not sure the other guys noticed how pretty she was. At that time, she had very short dark hair, almost like a boy’s, and they all drooled over pictures of blond girls with hair to the shoulders. But I spotted the weight under her white shirt when she leaned across a table, even though everything was properly buttoned up. Girl students were allowed to wear pretty much what they wanted. Laila’s clothes were modest, but somehow you could tell they were good quality. Maybe she got them sent from abroad or bought them online. After a week or so settling in, she became more confident. She was always laughing. For a while I was afraid she was laughing at me, but then I decided she was just carefree. She didn’t like computer games as much as I did, but she was crazy about The Messenger. That was the moment we clicked. I love it, I love it, don’t you? she said when the subject came up. I love the way he’s always sneaking up on people. And when he’s amazed by something in our world he doesn’t understand, he just says—

‘Frozen fireballs … Count me in!’ we both said at once.

I invited her to come to my house and watch The Messenger one evening when my parents were out. She had no shame about watching a kids’ program. We sat through five or six episodes on the trot. She mentioned some other shows I’d never heard of, so I guessed at her house she’d got more TV channels. Some of these programs weren’t even shown in the United States, I think, they were just made for export to a youth audience.

Every evening I went up on the roof to smoke a cigarette and looked out towards the sea, in the direction of Europe. If you looked the other way, south over the city, the trees and hills soon became semi-desert. It was all brown, with scars of mining and digging, the last attempt to get something out of the sand, with tipper trucks and lorries parked up and conveyor belts of dirt.

But what happened if you looked north? What went on up there across the sea? Spain, France, where the invaders had come from … Way beyond that, Germany. The people in Europe all had new cars and watches. And green woods and forests. The labels on the clothes had been put on by who they claimed to be, not knocked off in China like ours. The girls were blond and wore short dresses, showing their legs. The bars weren’t hidden in expensive hotels or in underground dives where you might get beaten up by an old alcoholic. The liquor places were on every corner, and women drank there too, ordering wine and cocktails.

Smoking my cigarette, I pictured this, through the low clouds and the gray sea on which I could see a far-off container ship.

I knew I had to go, but it was hard to get the courage up. My father would explode if I said I was quitting college. He really thought four years studying was going to make a difference—that with a degree I’d somehow have life on a string. I knew the only way to escape from all this was to leave the country. All that was holding me back was Laila and the feeble hope of sleeping with her.

Laila lived in a big house about a mile out of town. Inside her own grounds she wore Western skirts and dresses as well as the usual jeans. They weren’t very short, but they were elegant and you could see the honey-colored skin of her legs. There was a housekeeper, Farida, a woman with sleepy eyes. She wasn’t old, she was middle-aged, maybe thirty-five. She was tame like a cow. She brought in tea, she swept the floors, pushed back the stray bits of hair that came loose from her clip. She adored Laila, who was the only person who could make Farida lift up her heavy eyelids into a smile. The rest of us she drifted between, putting down cups, picking up ashtrays. Or else you’d see her carrying armfuls of washing down the corridor to a distant laundry. Sometimes lying on my bed at home I imagined that Farida asked Laila to her room at the back of the house and asked her to undress her and help her shower at the end of her long day’s work. There was a lot of kneeling down and straps and buttons to undo and many underclothes before Farida was ready for the shower, by which time Laila seemed to be naked as well, which was only fair.

The trouble with having fantasies was that I was never sure I was alone. In my bedroom wall was a moucharabieh, a carved wooden screen that gave onto the landing, where anyone could see through the gaps. In the small towns the shopkeepers spied through the shutters and the screens and only opened up when there were enough people in the street. You never knew if you were being watched. All my life was like that.

Laila had a younger brother called Billy and a cute little sister called Najat and they’d sometimes barge in when we were watching The Messenger or playing cards, but they didn’t hang around. In the last year at the boys’ school, the year before college, I’d given a kicking to a kid who’d been making life difficult for Billy, so he was kind of grateful, plus he could take a hint. I also gave him a Radiohead T-shirt of mine. Actually he was a bit of a dude and was growing up so fast I’d thought he’d soon outrank me.

Was I in love with Laila because she’d given me some encouragement and was therefore my best bet? I don’t know. But it pained me to see her and to go home without having done it with her. It really hurt. If I’d been offered the chance to sleep with all twelve girls in our lecture group one after the other or just Laila, just her … No contest, even if the twelve included Wasia and Kashira, who by any normal standards were both smoking hot.

I didn’t discuss Laila with other boys, though we did talk about sex in general when we were hanging out. If Laila’s name came up, I changed the subject. But on my own I thought a lot about how great it would be just to feel my zib sliding up inside her. Just that simple thing. I thought it might feel really quite hot, almost burning on the skin. By then of course, thinking about it, I had a huge boner.

My stepmother did nothing. Like all the women I knew, she lived mostly indoors and went out in the afternoon to the houses of her sisters or her friends. We weren’t rich because my father’s schemes never came to anything, but we weren’t as poor as some families in the medina. We had a cleaner, for instance—a very large unsmiling woman who came in once a week. She only charged a few coins. And my stepmother did the cooking. I think she was interested in that. The other thing she liked was birds. She had two cages with small songbirds in them. They remind me of my childhood in the Rif Mountains, she said. She also left the door open onto the roof terrace so others could fly into the house, which was built round a light well with a glass roof. The golden-beaked sparrows always found their way upstairs and out again.

*   *   *

A couple of days after the guy in the mirror told me to get going, I looked at some flights on the Internet, but they were expensive. Maybe I could get one of the ferries to Europe that were advertised all over town.

You gotta get out … Well, all right then. I’d be better off not torturing myself by seeing Laila every day. I’d done so little work I was likely going to fail my exams at the end of the year. Even if I didn’t, even if I completed the course, it still wouldn’t get me a job worth having. I’d have a degree in economics and business studies with a Miss Aziz Special in politics (including five hours’ free history). No one was going to hire me for that. Go to the building site, you jerk, that’s what they’d say. Go and join the line with the skilled masons and plumbers. So I was going to leave. I was going … Somewhere. Somerealwhere. Somefuckingproperwhere. Paris probably.

I knew almost nothing about Paris, but it was in Europe, they were Christian, they had bars, girls, old buildings, cinemas … So before the courage could leave me, I leapt off the bed and went upstairs. As I came near the door of the living room, a strange thing happened. I began to be outside myself, watching. I could see myself as a third person, my T-shirt and jeans, two spots on the chin, skinny arms and messed-up hair.

I saw myself going to tell my father.

There was me, Tariq, going into the living room. My father was sitting on a sofa where he was looking through his glasses at some papers.

What do you want? he said. Can’t you see I’m busy?

Sorry. What are you doing? said Tariq.

Accounts. They never end. Why aren’t you doing some work? I’m sure you’ve got reading to do.

No, I’m up to date with my reading, said Tariq, pushing back the hair from his forehead.

Dinner’s in an hour. You can tell me what you want then. And your stepmother. You know how much she worries.

I’m leaving. I’m going to live somewhere else.

God give me strength. You want to give up your studies?

Yeah, but that’s not the reason.

So what is the reason?

I want to live in a different place, a better place.

My father laughed and put down his papers—so without them he’d be free to laugh harder. Where? Fez? Algiers? I know you always wanted to go there. Think you’re a man for the big city?

No. That would just be … bigger.

Where then? Malaysia? He was really gasping now. Australia? Why not? Go and be a sheep farmer.

Paris, I think.

What on earth for? You don’t know anyone there.

No, but I’d like to see where my mother grew up. Find out some more about her. And I can speak the language.

Think they’d understand your accent? Anyway, they hate us, the French. They always have.

Tariq rubbed his chin. I don’t think they’d hate me. I think I’d fit in. There’s a lot of us there.

"Oh yes, sure. Living in filthy tower blocks in the banlieue."

I don’t mind where I end up.

And how are you going to live?

Like a peasant. Tariq seemed to think for a moment. Like a hero.

My father dabbed the corner of his eyes with a handkerchief. And what are you going to use for money?

I don’t need money, Tariq said. I’ll live off my wits.

"Your wits!"

I hope so. You know I can speak English like a native.

Yes, like a native of America. All that TV.

And French. My mother—

You truly are a ridiculous child, said my father, his shoulders no longer heaving. Go and do some work.

He picked up his papers and put his glasses on again. Tariq backed slowly towards the door. It looked like he was hoping my father would stop him. With his hand on the doorknob, he hesitated.

Well? My father looked up from his papers. What are you waiting for?

Back in my room I heaved out a backpack and stuffed some clothes in it. I took my passport and all the money I’d saved up. It didn’t come to much, though it included some euros I’d got from a Spanish tourist for showing him round. Then I went into the bathroom and took a long hard look at my reflection. The lighting wasn’t so good as the time before and my face looked a bit greasy.

Oh fuck it, I thought. Let’s go.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, I got a lift with a lorry. There were crates of limonada and Sprite rattling behind us. The driver gave me a cigarette. We drove past Laila’s house and from high up in the cab I could see over the wall onto the lawns. There was a covered electric lamp glowing on the veranda. I wanted her to come out of the house, but I also couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her. I felt for a moment as though someone had grabbed my lungs and was squeezing me to death. Fuck, was this what a heart attack feels like?

I shut my eyes and let the road take me away.

*   *   *

Maybe I shouldn’t say how I got into Europe. A long airless night in the back of a lorry in a cargo hold—not something I want to go into or remember. And for sure Marseille wasn’t how I’d pictured it. I suppose a freight terminal’s not the best place to enter a country.

There are good and bad things about being nineteen. One of the good things is you can sleep pretty much anywhere—on a beach, in a field, or in my case between two pallets on the metal floor of a curtain-sided truck. I wasn’t even stiff as I fiddled with the fastenings of the canvas, waiting till we were some way out of the terminal. When the driver stopped at what I thought must be a traffic light, I hopped off.

France at last. Except I could have been in any industrial area. Warehouses, roundabouts, lorries, everything in concrete or metal, the most human thing the words on the signs—SAINT-MARTIN DE CRAU, MARTIGUES. Even this ass-end of the country looked rich to me. All that expensive fuel turning into smoke as the drivers worked the gears, revving up to get the wheels turning under the big loads. To say nothing of the cargo itself, the loot that was weighing down the giant red tractor-trailers of Norbert Dentressangle. I walked towards what I thought might be a service area, but turned out to be a weighbridge.

It was an hour before I got myself into a café attached to a filling station where I ate a cheese sandwich from a cellophane wrapper. I didn’t have enough euros for a train to Paris, so I thought I’d better try hitchhiking. I knew that Lyon was in the right direction and Bordeaux wasn’t. But I guessed most of the lorries would be headed for Paris anyway, so it was just a question of getting one to stop.

The toilets were pretty bad. The stench … It was as though there’d been an outbreak of dysentery. And the mess on the floor. Is it like that in their own homes—with torn paper on the tiles with piss and water squelching underfoot? But I needed to wash somehow, so I did my best while trying not to gag.

Back in the cafeteria, I noticed a girl on her own. She had brown oily hair and looked like she hadn’t slept for days. She was maybe four or five years older than me and she didn’t immediately look away when I caught her eye, so I ordered a coffee and took it to the next table.

Where are you going? I asked in French, trying not to sound

Reviews for Paris Echo

[brumby18 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

DId not allow me to identify too well with the characters - maybe my cultural prejudice/inhibitions. Life threads seemed to go nowhere - maybe the beauty of the book that life is a little like that? Wrapped thraeads up nicely at the end. Enjoyed but not a page turner for me. Paris background was fun.

[devlindusty · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sebastian Faulks is on of the best literary figures of his generation and The Paris Echo proves it.

[iansales_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read Birdsong twenty years ago – I forget why I decided to do so – and I’ve sort of followed Faulks’s career ever since, possibly because his books were available in the subscription library I joined on my move to Abu Dhabi in 1994 and his name was familiar from Birdsong. None of his novels have matched that one, and in fact many have been disappointing in one way or another. But, as British middle-brow literary fiction authors go, he’s at least better than Ian McEwan. Paris Echo is middling Faulks. It presents an interesting slice of history – Paris under the Nazis – and comments on collaboration and its impact on people and families of the time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer much in the way of plot as a substrate for this discussion, and in fact seems more concerned with the intersection of the lives of two immigrants in Paris, a female American academic and a teenage Moroccan who has had himself smuggled into the country, than the actual story the characters are intended to be springboards for. But the Maghrebi teenager’s experiences are all very anodyne, and the US academic is a bit of a blank slate, and the two narratives run along side each other but do not influence each other to any degree which sort of renders it all a bit moot. There’s some good historical stuff in here, but there’s sadly little in the way of plot and the two protagonists are somewhat thin. Faulks has written some good stuff during his career, but this is not one of them.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Set primarily in Paris, an Algerian youth and an American historian share an apartment and share a desire to find answers to questions about the past. Both characters, from completely different cultures, find themselves drawn to the echoes of Paris and the lives of people torn apart by war. I am left asking myself if it is better to hold on to aggregious behavior from the past or to try to move on with an open mind & heart? Themes include love and hate, cross-cultural openness and close-mindedness, and the pros and cons of trying to keep the past relevant to choices in the present. The book was interesting, although it felt a bit likely a barely disguised history lesson.

[reallifereading · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am a relatively quick reader, so for a book to take me some two months to read means several things..1. I am not all that interested in it2. I am not completely thrown off it so I am still willing to pick it up now and then, if I can remember to, among all the other many books I am reading at the same time. So here this book is, it was brought along in the car as my 'waiting to pick up the kids from school' read, it was brought along in the swimming bag as my 'waiting for the kids to finish their swim class' read. For a book, it was relatively widely travelled, at least in my suburban town. Parts of the book interested me. I liked reading about Tariq and his strange escape from Morocco. I was disappointed when Sandrine disappeared, I wanted to find out more about her. I learnt a lot more about the Parisian metro system and station names than I ever expected to learn from a book.I enjoyed reading the invented archived interviews that Hannah listens to as part of her research. It reminded me of when I did my master's thesis and how I combed through audio interviews in the Singapore archives. The stories of Tariq and Hannah often felt like two separate books that just so happened to coincidentally come together in one, in a way that I still don't get. And that was seemingly brushed off as a, eh, that's what people do, kind of way. For me this was a, ah Paris, and an, ah historical research, but essentially meh read.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have enjoyed every single book by Sebastian Faulks that I have read, and loved On Green Dolphin Street so much, so my reluctance to read Paris Echo makes no sense at all, except that the bare outline of the description made me nervous. Hannah, an American post-doc, comes to Paris ten years after her last stay, to do research into the lives of ordinary Parisian women during the Second World War. Tariq is an Algerian teenager who, through a series of events, ends up as a lodger of sorts in her small apartment. I think I was worried about what would happen in the wrong hands, that Tariq would do something terrible, or Hannah would, and I would be left feeling unhappy about the novel. But Sebastian Faulks is not a first-time author looking to write something edgy or controversial. He knows exactly what he's doing. Here, Hannah is a naturally cautious woman who is used to being alone. She's given access to a series of recordings of women recalling their wartime experiences living in Paris and she is drawn into their lives. Meanwhile, Tariq is figuring out how to survive in a city that doesn't welcome him. His natural resilience means he's willing to explore the city and he especially loves the Metro. He gets a menial job at the fabulously named Panama Fried Poulet spends his free time exploring. The careful way they manage to form a friendship is just wonderful.There's a clever bit of blurred time in this novel, but the main thing is how evocatively Faulks describes a Paris, not of tourists and grand avenues, but of immigrants, not always in France legally, trying to get by and of ordinary Parisian women during the war, and how they managed to survive. There were moments where it was clear that Faulks is much more comfortable with the thoughts of teenagers living eighty years ago than with a teenager today and he sometimes adds actions and thoughts to Tariq that don't feel entirely natural, but this was still and extraordinary novel, that I enjoyed thoroughly.

[fredreeca · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hannah has moved to Paris to do some research on WWII. Paris has not been very kind to her in the past. She takes in Tariq, totally by accident. Tariq is a refugee determined to make it in Paris. Hannah and Tariq become strange friends but it works for them. Their connection is unique and enjoyable. I love the matter of fact tone of this author. There is no sugar-coating, no over-dramatizing. It just is. However, the story is filled with mundane, everyday activities. This I could do without. It also repeats itself in several places. But, I could not stop reading. I enjoyed the characters and their struggles. Especially Hannah. She discovers something during her research and it totally knocks her for a loop! This is a game changer in this story. I enjoy historical remembrance stories. This book did not have as many as I like, but it made up for it in historical references. I learned a lot in this read about the struggles many women had during the occupation of France. Not sure I have every really given that much thought. I love it when an author gives me a different insight.I received this novel from Henry Holt for a honest review.

[bluegiraffe-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Blurb from Amazon: "American historian Hannah intends to immerse herself in World War II research in Paris, wary of paying much attention to the city where a youthful misadventure once left her dejected. But a chance encounter with Tariq, a Moroccan teenager whose visions of the City of Lights as a world of opportunity and rebirth starkly contrast with her own, disrupts her plan." The story of two outsiders to France, academic reasearcher Alice and teenage adventurer Tariq, this is an interesting novel with several themes: life choices, education, outsider attitudes, behavior under stress, colonialism, identity. Faulks is an excellent writer, so the prose is easy to follow and a pleasure to read. I started out not liking Tariq, but there is more character development for Tariq than for Alice, and he ended up being my favorite character. This would make a good book club selection (warning: occasional vulgar language for those who are bothered about that sort of thing) as there is plenty to mull over. Thanks to the Early Reviewer program for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[sleahey_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Two unlikely visitors to Paris become friends when Tariq, a young man from Morocco, and Hannah, a researcher from the US, become housemates. Both are seeking answers: Tariq hopes to learn about the mother who left him as a young child; and Hannah seeks oral histories of women of the Resistance. Each ends up with more questions, as well as more self-awareness. I particularly enjoyed the somewhat ethereal scenes of Tariq's encounters with the puppeteer Victor Hugo and the mysterious Clemence, and the serendipitous connections between Tariq's and Hannah's quests. As one would expect, the accounts of women's lives during the German Occupation of France were horrific and powerful.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

*I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.*I've read some great historical fiction centered around Paris and France during the Nazi occupation that this book unfortunately just didn't compare well. I enjoyed the story, which is largely set in the 2000s Paris and involves an unlikely friendship between a historical researcher and a young Morroccan man. While I liked the stories they uncovered as the research progresses, I felt like this novel had too many separate strands that never really wove together all that well.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ever since his immense critical and commercial success with Birdsong, a new novel from Sebastian Faulks has always been a major event in the literary world. His A Week in December is one of my favourite novels (although I think that Capital by John Lanchester – and how eagerly I await a new novel from him – covered similar ground even more effectively), but I struggled to engage with some of his more recent books. As a regular participant in BBC Radio 4’s literary quiz programme, The Write Stuff, he has showcased his ability to produce marvellous pastiches of established icons, although I found his contribution to the ‘official’ James Band canon, Devil May Care, rather disappointing, and his officially sanctioned addition to P G Wodehouse’s corpus, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells was simply an embarrassment to all concerned. I was, therefore, a little uncertain as I embarked upon this latest novel, although all the reviews that I had seen had been very favourable.On this occasion, those reviewers spoke with straight tongue. This is a clever and engaging novel, and features several of Faulks’s soundest characteristics. It is set in Paris in 2006 and takes the form of two counterpoised narratives, one related by Hannah, an American academic who has returned to the city after a gap of ten years. In her previous visit she had been a postgraduate student, embarking upon an academic career. While there she had fallen into a passionate, but ultimately damaging, relationship with a Russian playwright who, after a few months, simply moved away, returning to his wife in Russia. This time, Hannah is commissioned to write a chapter for an academic study of life in Paris during the German occupation between 1940 and 1944.The other account is related by Tariq, a disaffected young Moroccan who reaches such a pitch of frustration with his family life that he decides to leave, making his way by ferry to France. Having landed in Marseille, he befriends a young French woman, Sandrine, who is trying to make her way to Paris. Sandrine is clearly unwell, and once they reach Paris, Tariq shows unwonted initiative and manages to find them a room to live in, and to secure a job for himself. Meanwhile, Sandrine’s health deteriorates, to such an extent that Hannah comes across her lying ill in a doorway, and takes her into her own rented apartment. Tariq joins them there shortly afterwards, at which point a recuperated Sandrine suddenly departs, trying to make her way to England.The rest of the novel revolves around Tariq’s attempts to establish himself in Paris, and to develop sufficient maturity to encourage Hannah to allow him to continue to occupy a room in her flat, while Hannah pursues her researches, with mixed success. However, as this is Faulks, the are some of his characteristic quirks of time and place, with both Tariq and Hannah experiencing momentary displacement, as the depth of the city’s history exerts its power upon them. The sense of history at work is heightened by Faulks’s use of stations on the Paris Metro as chapter titles. Perhaps more than any other underground system, reading the line maps of the Paris Metro is like a history lesson in itself, and Tariq is made increasingly aware of the city’s past as he wanders the streets and rides the subway to pass his time.This may not quite be up to the standard of A Week in December, and will probably fall well short of the commercial success enjoyed by Birdsong, but it is a thoughtful and well written novel, and shows Faulks coming close to his former high standards.

[miss.mesmerized · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tariq is 19 when he finds his Moroccan home too small, too far away from the real world. Paris is the place he wants to be, not just because of the dreams of the city of lights he has, but also to follow his deceased mother’s traces who was born and raised there. On his way, he meets a young girl and together they arrive in the French capital without any place to stay or any idea of how to earn money. Hannah, an American researcher twice their age, accommodates them; what was meant as an arrangement just for a couple of days becomes a cohabitation for months in which Tariq not only discovers that he is not only ignorant of Europe’s history, but also of the struggles between France and its former colonies in northern Africa. But also Hannah not only makes progress in her work on women in the second World War, but also in her personal love life.I was eager to read Sebastian Fault’s novel because seeing the French history through the eyes of a Moroccan teenager seemed to be quite an interesting perspective. The author certainly has chosen quite a unique approach to history, since it is mainly strangers who do not actually have a family bond or personal connection to what has happened and thus, can look at things a bit more freely. What I liked best was actually Tariq’s education through the metro, especially since he didn’t learn because he was told to, but because he felt a need and wanted to. This informal kind of education lead to a lot more depth than any formal teaching could ever have provided. And it clearly showed that this kind of knowledge has a certain relevance in everyday life and it not just dusty knowledge of no practical use. Even though the whole set-up of the novel was not really authentic – which middle-aged American woman would ever house a refugee in her expensive Parisian flat and how could a Moroccan teenager move around Paris without ever being eyed closely by the police or the people around him – I enjoyed reading it, especially since the narration of the past events was much more inspiring than the plot set in the present.

[brenzi_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was the worst book I’ve read in a long, long time. If it hadn’t been an ER book, I never would’ve finished it. But I forged my way through what was really quite a slog. Part coming of age, part WWII history about the role of Paris women in collaboration with the Germans (or not) it held great promise but never really lived up to it. It failed to draw me in on so many levels. An Algerian teenager who doesn’t really know what he wants, leaves his home and travels to France to work for what amounted to a few months. He finds that all is not rosy in France and eventually returns home, somehow buoyed up to finish his degree and go on at college. Why he arrived at this conclusion is about as clear as mud.An American woman, doing research about the Parisian women during the war years, listens to audio recordings supplied by these women in their old age. In the meantime, an old acquaintance, recently divorced, seems to have fallen in love with her. She’s oblivious. Until the last few pages of the book. Then she suddenly realizes she’s in love with him and MUST move in with him.The worst, and I mean the very worst part for me was the fact that the author felt the need to flood every single page with French street names or restaurant names or neighborhood names until I wanted to just throw the book against the wall. I don’t speak French. If I wanted to read a book loaded with French phrases I’d look for an actual French author. This was absolutely mind-numbing and very, very tiresome. Just like the rest of the book. Save yourself.

[wickabod · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've enjoyed Faulks's fiction in the past. At its best (BIRDSONG; CHARLOTTE GRAY), his fiction succeeds because his characters leap off the page. He's capable of historical fiction that comes alive and is deeply moving.PARIS ECHO unfortunately is not that book. The plot seemed to hold such promise. There has been some good recent history written about the lives of Parisian women during World War II, and I was looking forward to reading Faulks's fictional take on that story. Alas, the narrative feels contrived and the merging of modern Paris with the "ghosts of Paris past" just doesn't work. It's clunky, lifeless, and ultimately unsatisfying.The story could have been redeemed with some of those strong characters Faulks has given us in the past. But Tariq and Hannah are unlikeable and unbelievable. Worse than that, they're flat and boring. Halfway through the book, I had long since stopped caring about what happened to either of them. And in the end, it's all sort of strangely unresolved. I can't really recommend this one. Two stars rounded up due to the imagined oral histories of Parisians in the Occupation, which are interesting.(Thank you to Henry Holt for an advance copy in exchange for an unbiased review.)

[eachurch-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In this ponderous novel, Faulks sets out to tackle several interesting questions all of which concern the relationship between the past and the present. Some of the story lines involve the far past, some the near future, some involve things the characters know, others things that they don’t know. They are all interesting questions, and parts of this novel are intriguing and well-done. (I love the idea of the past overlapping with the present.) Other parts of this novel, however, are rather dry and slow going. Even though the philosophical questions he raises are intriguing, I ended up not caring very much about the story or the characters.

[mikedi-3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Okay, I'm not going over the premise as that's done in every review and shouldn't be. I really was disappointed in this read for several reasons. I thought the author was trying to impress the reader with his knowledge of French streets and train stops. The constant intro of new street names was numbing. I mean who cares? I thought many little'instances' were staged for the book and irrelevant to the story, like Tariq taking money back for someone in Algeria. That entire scene's purpose is never explained and seemed inserted to take up space. The entire story seemed contrived and meant to draw parallels between France's actions in WWII and their colonialism in Algeria. I was very disappointed in the ending. Others may enjoy this book, in the end I did not.

[gwnfkt12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paris Echo is the story of Hannah and Tariq, from two different worlds but temporarily sharing the same Paris apartment. There is a strong tie to Occupied France and the resistance, through recordings of personal stories, and the ghosts of these women haunt both Hannah and Tariq, for different reasons. I loved how both time periods, modern day and 1940s, were made to seem simultaneous. But I didn't feel for either of the characters. There was too much jumping around between the two points of view and while I liked Tariq for being so blunt and honest, I didn't like Hannah at all. It was a decent read, but hard to love the characters.

[hubblegal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hannah is an American historian who is in Paris to do some research. She’s writing about the lives of women who were present in Paris during the German Occupation. She listens for hours to recordings these women made detailing what living in Paris was like at that time and how these women felt about the German soldiers. As she walks the streets of Paris, memories of her time there ten years before and the love affair she has never gotten over begin to haunt her. She’s also haunted by the ghosts of the Paris witnesses she’s listening to.She takes in a boarder, 19-year-old Tariq, who has run away from his home in Morocco. Tarij isn’t sure why he came to Paris, possibly to find answers to all of the questions he’s had about his long dead mother. Hannah and Tariq couldn’t be more different and yet they form a friendship. Tariq is ashamed that he knows so little history and learns that many North Africans hate France for its treatment of Muslims. One of his newly found “teachers” is a man who thinks he’s Victor Hugo, a homeless man who performs puppet shows in the subway for donations.This is a gorgeously written literary work, a slow-moving, thought-provoking book. There are several stories in this book, not only the stories of Hannah and Tariq but also of the women who witnessed Paris during the German Occupation, relating the atrocities committed, and real-life women such as Andree Borrel, a French heroine of World War II who was executed by the Germans. The ghosts of the past converge with those walking the streets of Paris in the present day and Paris’ history continues to echo into the future. This is a book that will linger long after the last page is read. Most highly recommended.This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.

[runner56_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tariq Sandrine, a Moroccan teenager, has taken the decision to travel to Paris in part to discover something about his Parisian born mother...."Paris and its beauty, by its pavement cafes and its trees and bridges, by its cathedral floating on the stream and all the other charms to which no sane person could fail to respond"...... Hannah is in Paris as part of her studies; a thesis she is writing on the women of Paris during its occupation by the Germans in 1940-1944. When Tariq and Hannah meet by chance a strange alliance develops between them, a meeting of lost souls in a city with a troubled war history.Tariq finds employment in the guise of a fast food outlet where he is introduced to the joys of smoking hash and loose women. As a 19 year old and a late developer his part in Paris Echo is his coming of age. It is however the experiences of Hannah and her attempt to source surviving evidence either written or recorded that lends to Paris Echo a great sense of loss and hopelessness. She learns of the attitude of Parisian women to the German occupation and tearfully researches such brave resistance fighters as Andree Borrel, a young French woman trained by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Through an act of betrayal Borrel is captured and sent to "Natzweiler" the only concentration camp ever built in France...."but when her turn came, Andree was still conscious and fought back, tearing flesh from the face of her murderer with her fingernails as he pushed her into the flames"....Fraternization, collaboration and betrayal was what defined Paris at this time..."the indifference of others; the racial hatred and propaganda and the deportations to the death camps"......This is a poignant sobering story blending historical fact into a modern setting. Two young people trying to interpret this business of living and their role within that. For Tariq it will mean friendship, manhood and winning the girl of his dreams. For Hannah true love has always been close but will she discover its tender touch before it disappears. Paris Echo is a story full of hope with a simple message that life is for the taking and only by action can we understand the true meaning of what it is to exist. Many thanks to the good people at netgalley for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written.

[pdebolt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel, although not my favorite of Faulk's books, is well written with an interesting premise and set in the most beautiful of locations, Paris. Hannah is an American historian researching the lives of Parisian women during the German occupation of Paris from 1940 to 1944. These were the most interesting parts of the book, and their stories came alive under the skillful guidance of the author.Hannah's life intersects with Tariq, a teenager from Morocco, who has come to Paris to "find himself" and leave the past. He comes to live as a boarder with Hannah, through a mutual acquaintance. Having dismissed history as boring and not applicable to present-day life, he eventually gains a new understanding when he is able to help her with the translations that drive her research.I am grateful to LibraryThing and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

[annewk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nineteen-year-old Tariq runs away from his home in Algiers and discovers Paris. His explorations are the fun part of this novel, as he travels on the Metro throughout the city. Then there is Hannah, an American 30-something PhD candidate who is researching lives of French women during WWII. For some reason -- because she is generous? because she needs help with the French language? because she is lonely? -- she allows Tariq to move into her flat. He learns some French history from her while she learns a great deal about the Paris women of the 1940s. That is the sad part. That and Hannah's unhappy relationship with men since a heartbreaking affair when she was a college student in Paris. Perhaps the aftermath of the affair is not well defined; I had a hard time understanding why it took her 10 years to get over it.There are a few other points that didn't quite make sense to me but they won't spoil the reading for anyone.