Lead Review

• Book: The Parisian
• Location: France, Palestine
• Author: Isabella Hammad

Review Author: tripfiction

3.5*

Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards (Fiction, With A Sense Of Place) 2020

At 550 pages, this easily joins the hallowed ranks of the sweeping novel and is set in the complex period of history of the early 20th Century. It is a tale of family, of life, love, history, culture and more…

The eponymous Parisian of the title is Midhat Kalal who, as the book opens, is making his way to Marseille and on to Montpellier. There he will be lodging with the Molinou family whilst he studies medicine. His time in the city sets the scene for a well observed and sumptuous narrative. He of course falls for the daughter of the house, Jeannette, and theirs is a dance of manners as he loses his heart to her.

An event propels him to Paris and thence back to his home of Nablus, where he has to conform once again to the demands of his own culture.

The story is set within the context of the wider political situation going on within France and within the Middle East, as World War 1 takes its casualties, and the British and French flex their muscles beyond their own country borders. Midhat is generally the constant as the story moves across continents, decades and families. Yes, it feels Flaubertian, yes it is a magnum opus following in the tradition of the great French novel: Madame Bovary, A la recherche du temps perdu and further afield The Thornbirds, Gone With the Wind (not to mention the Russian epics)… you name it, there are some great, sweeping titles out there. Is this one of them?

At the beginning, the the cast of characters and their family relationships and family trees are laid out. At the back, the key events in the development of the Palestinian and Syrian National movements are listed, against which the novel is set. These constructs often leave me feeling a little anxious, I know that I am going to have to wrestle with a multitude of characters and events.

The quality of writing is excellent, it reads like velvet (rich and smooth and the words almost caress the pages – I am thinking akin to the experience of eating a Galaxy Chocolate bar!), yet it is more than a little dry at times. It is a very daring choice for a debut novel and the author does pull it off with skill and aplomb. However, I could ‘see’ that this is a big novel yet I couldn’t really ‘feel’ it. I felt overwhelmed at times by the characters, the detail, the use of foreign script (I could understand the French but not the Arabic) and by the end I felt drained – and not in a good way. The novel took from me, rather than me taking from it, which is quite an unusual experience for me.

So, overall, I intellectually ‘get’ what it’s about, that it is indeed an achievement (especially for a first time author) and am impressed that the author has real skill at writing and storytelling. But for me it just didn’t get under my skin at all.

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