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1940s, 2000s: Paris as you have never seen it before – a city which holds the echoes and shadows of Vichy and Algeria.
Paris Echo
What you need to know before your trail
Here is Paris as you have never seen it before – a city in which every building seems to hold the echo of an unacknowledged past, the shadows of Vichy and Algeria.
American postdoctoral researcher Hannah and runaway Moroccan teenager Tariq have little in common, yet both are susceptible to the daylight ghosts of Paris. Hannah listens to the extraordinary witness of women who were present under the German Occupation; in her desire to understand their lives, and through them her own, she finds a city bursting with clues and connections. Out in the migrant suburbs, Tariq is searching for a mother he barely knew. For him in his innocence, each boulevard, Métro station and street corner is a source of surprise.
Travel Guide
Paris – a tour by metro stations
Each chapter is the name of a metro station in Paris and they each have their own chapter to tell in the story of Paris and the wars. A selection which will make you question what lies behind the name of all metro stations and indeed streets in the capital
Stalingrad
“to honour the Russian victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, a second of the boulevard was renamed Place Stalingrad. And that’s when the station changed its name too.”
Saint Denis
When I got there, Saint-Denis looked like it was home to people they didn’t want inside the city walls. Arabs and African mostly. It wasn’t like the casbah at home where everyone looked the same, comes from the same tribe. Some people here had black skin, some had brown. What they had in common was they all looked cold.
Ternes
“It was by no means a charming part of town but even this street had its half-closed dramas”
Belleville
Louise continued her fast life between Bellevlle and the Marais, still a blighted neighborhood.
Belleville, I knew, had always been a poor part of the city. Once, like Montmartre, it had been a village outside the old boundaries with vineyards on its slopes but after the Franco-Prussian War, it had been drawn into the new, enlarged Paris.”
Louvre
The park was beginning to empty as I walked towards the eastern end, where it joined the courtyards of the Louvre. Here the gravelled paths gave way to a green lawn on which were hedges of box and yew.
Barbes – Rochechouart
Barbes was a revolutionary from Guadeloupe said Hannah. And Rochechouart was an abbess, the head of a convent”
Paris Echo
Streetview Maps
J) France - Paris - Barbès - Rochechouart
L) France - Paris - Rue Tanger
Booktrailer Review
Susan:@thebooktrailer
Tariq Sandrine, a teenager from Tangiers is in Paris to find out about his Parisian born mother. Hannah, is there to study the women on the city as part of her thesis on women during the war. The two characters meet and avery unique view of Paris emerges. Two people in one very different city, a city of many stories, many faces and many guises. Tariq is in awe and fear of each corner of the city which seems to be a reminder of its troubled history, relationships with Africa and French territories overseas.
The story is separated into chapters each of them named after a metro station or area of the city. (It’s actually a really fun and quirky way of finding your way around as well) Paris is the city for reading its history through the names of its stations and streets. Some of them reveal historical battles, figures and a moment in time. Every one is a chapter in Tariq and Hannah’s stories.
I found the characters of Tariq and Hannah to be very interesting in how they give such unique viewpoints of a time and place, a setting and the people of the city over time.Both are outsiders but each wander the streets looking for something, answers, a history, a clue …..Two lost souls in a city lost to them.
Hannah’s story looking into the women during the war and how they reacted to the German occupation was interesting. Often a part of history forgotten. There were some tough ‘scenes’ to read and it made me think of all those stories women never got to tell, that we still don’t know about.
This was like a history lesson told via the metro stations with a good strong message. Two people wanting to find answers talk and help each other to form a bigger picture so they both find their own story. The city, and the past are full of surprises but it’s only by looking into the past and learning from it that we can really continue and move forward. How we deal with war, how we fall into the trap of following the crowd, drowning out individual voices, how war shapes a person…there’s lots in here to explore.
It does read a bit heavy handed at times and doesn’t flow in parts. The story also sometimes reads like the history lesson it is, but all in all, a novel to appreciate and characters and a city to learn from.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Paris Echo
Destination : Paris Author/Guide: Sebastian Faulks Departure Time: 1940s, 2000s
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