Paris: The Novel, by Edward Rutherfurd

After finishing Los Angeles Stories, by Ry Cooder, on August 30, I moved right on to Paris: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd.  I got this book soon after the husband and I returned from our vacation in May to Paris, Florence, and Rome.  I had never been to any of those places before so was super excited to go.  I had low expectations for Paris, but after getting there and being there for a day, I fell in love.  Paris was magnificent and I loved every moment we were there.  I also have a soft spot for historical fiction, so was excited to see this book at Costco one afternoon, and decided it should come home with me.

This book is quite lengthy - 805 pages - so it took me a while to get through it.  I finished it on October 26h.  The Husband and I had an ongoing joke about the book.  Every night he would ask me what the book was about, and every night I would tell him it was about Paris.  Clearly it was about Paris - it's the title of the book.  But it was so much more than that.  Rutherfurd told the story of Paris through several fictitious families that lived there at different times in pivotal periods of Paris' and France's history.

Rutherfurd provides an illustration of 6 family trees - these families all are intertwined throughout the book in interesting ways - the families Le Sourd, de Cygne, Renard, Blanchard, Gascon, and Jacob.  The illustration begins in 1282 and goes through 1968, so yeah, the book covers a lot.

I loved how Rutherfurd paints such real and vivid literary pictures with his rich and descriptive writing style.  As you are reading, it is so easy to visualize the people, the places, and the details that he writes about.  I loved how he would describe a place, and I could actually picture it because I had recently been there.

When in Paris, the Husband and I took a guided tour of the Eiffel Tower.  Our tour guide described how the tower came to be - a contest for a monument for the world's fair was opened with very specific requirements.  It it had to be a specific height (to top the Washington Monument in America), and the winner of the contest had to fund the construction of the structure themselves.  One option was a giant guillotine and another contender was a giant sprinkler.  The tower was submitted by Gustave Eiffel - an engineer - and it was selected.  Eiffel negotiated that he would pay for the construction if he could keep the profits the tower generated for the next 20 years.  The book echoed this sentiment as Rutherfurd wrote about the character Thomas Gascon, a poor boy who lived near Sacré Coeur, who needed a job.  He worked for Eiffel on the Statue of Liberty, and when the tower was starting to be built, Thomas got a job from Monsieur Eiffel himself.  In one of the many conversations between Thomas and Eiffel, Thomas learns from Eiffel about the reasons behind the tower's design:

     "What is the greatest threat to a tall structure, young Gascon? Do you know?"
     "Its weight, I suppose monsieur."
     "No.  Not really.  It's the wind.  The reason my tower has the shape it has, the reason it is constructed the way it is, all this is because of the wind, whose force would otherwise tear it down.  That is the reason.  Nothing else."
     "Is that why it is just iron girders, so the wind can blow through?"
     "Excellent.  It is an open lattice construction, so that the wind can blow clean through it.  An despite the fact that it is made of iron, which is strong, it is actually very light.  If you put the tower in a cylindrical box, as a bottle of wine is sometimes sold, the air contained in the box would be almost as heavy as the metal tower itself.  Amazing, but true."

Jumping to 1911, Thomas Gascon is married and has a few children.  He has taken his children for a walk around Montmartre:

There was a funicular, nowadays, that ran up the left side of the steep, high slope, but one had to pay.  Besides, as he told Monique when she complained, they wouldn't get any exercise if they didn't go up the steps.
     The sun was out, catching the soaring white domes of the church of Sacré Coeur.  High on its hill, it gleamed over the huge oval valley of Paris.
     "Most of my life," Thomas remarked to his children "this hilltop was just a huge field of mud and wooden scaffolding.  I used to wonder if I'd ever live to see the church finished.  They didn't take the scaffolding down from the big dome until you were born, Monique, when I was thirty-five."

Jumping back to 1877, Thomas is courting Édith, a girl he saw at the funeral procession for Victor Hugo and fell instantly in love with, despite not knowing her name, where she lived, or anything about her.  He found her many years later, and began courting her.  Thomas and Edith went for a walk at the Trocadéro, and some pleasure gardens nearby.  Rutherfurd describes the scene:

     On the slope below the Trocadéro's Moorish concert hall as it looked across the river to the site of Monsieur Eiffel's tower, there were some pleasure gardens, which contained two big statues, one of an elephant, the other of a rhinoceros.
     "I remember my father bringing me here to look at these," Édith told him, "when I was a girl."  She smiled.  "So I like to come and see them sometimes."  She shrugged.  "It brings back good memories."

I remember seeing these statues outside the Musee d'Orsay.  They were absolutely lovely!

Also in 1877, we follow Roland de Cygne after school one day going to see the tomb of Napoléon at Les Invalides near Champ Mars and the Eiffel Tower.

     Roland was a conscientious pupil.  It didn't come naturally, because he often didn't want to work.  It was only because of his mother, really, that he forced himself to do it.  "Promise me, Roland, that you will try your best at school."  It was almost the last thing she'd ever said to him.  And to his credit, he had always kept his promise.  Other boys in the class might be cleverer, but by working hard, he usually managed to get grades that were only a little behind the leaders.
     So when, during a history class that morning, the teacher had asked how many boys had been to visit the horror, and he was the only one not to raise his hand, and the teacher told him to go to see it, he'd decided to go at once.  After all, it wasn't far.
     ... Instead of finding a nave beneath the dome, one looked down from a circular gallery into a marble pit.  Twelve pillars of victory encircled this pagan crypt, and in its center, upon a massive, green granite pedestal, rested a stupendous sarcophagus of polished red porphyry, bulging with imperial pride.
    

     The tomb of Napoléon, child of the Revolution, conqueror of God's anointed monarchs, emperor of France.  This was the horror that Roland had been sent to see.

The book was so rich with descriptions of places, people, architecture, feelings, and historical events.  It is impossible to touch on them all.  I absolutely loved this book.  I think I would feel exactly the same had I not bought it in a post-vacation Paris-loving haze at Costco one afternoon.

Randomly, my in-laws were visiting the Husband and I after I just started the book, and my father-in-law, Jim, mentioned he was reading Rutherfurd's New York book.  I did not know that there were other books by this author out there (though I can't say I am surprised).  I asked Jim to please save the New York book for me to read.  If you like books rich in history that might help you learn a thing or many about what happened in that place over time, pick this book up.  You won't be sorry - and if you haven't already been to Paris - be prepared to want to make the trip.  You will absolutely love it!

Note: all pictures here were taken by me on our vacation to Paris