Book review: Paris in the Present Tense

Yet Jules’s life is not all strolls along sunlit boulevards and dinners at intimate restaurants. He mourns the death of his wife of 50 years, Jacqueline — “since her death his many infatuations had radiated like burning infra-red into the hearts of younger and inappropriate women” but purely as “an attempt to reach beyond the veil and love life once more”.

His grandson has leukemia and Jules is determined to raise the millions of dollars he believes will cure the child in America. When the phone jingle is rejected, he comes up with the less original idea of insurance fraud — and takes out a policy with the corporation who spurned his composition.

The past is always with him. At four years old, he witnessed the brutal shooting of his young parents by Nazi soldiers on their retreat from Paris and, 70 years later, the horror still haunts him.

Strangely, we hear nothing about his subsequent upbringing, yet much about a jeunesse doré in a sun-filled world of summery sensuality.

But the present tense has turned tricky for Jules. The police are on his trail following a double homicide and track him down as a result of a Jihadi in Syria sending them incriminating evidence — a blood-soaked restaurant bill (aptly enough).

An intriguing read by an American writer described by one critic as “the last epic novelist”, Paris in the Present Tense offers an insider’s view of Paris, a detective hunt (the best part) and disputations with friend François — a philosophe of the Jean-Paul Sartre school.

The novel probably looked like a yearning “May and December” romance in 2014 but what squeaked under the bar even as recently as last year is more problematic.

 

Anne Garvey is a freelance writer