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Paris in the Present Tense: A Novel
Mark Helprin's powerful, rapturous new novel is set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour--a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust--must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present. In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life--days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine--Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth.In the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin's Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.
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Community Reviews
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Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin
394 pages
What’s it about?
This is a novel about looking back at your life. Jules Lacour lives in Paris. He is a cellist, widower, veteran of the Algerian war, and a child of the Holocaust. He finds himself aging, alone, and with a quest. He wants desperately to help his only daughter Catherine and his young grandson Luc. Luc has leukemia and Jules would like to help get the family out of Paris and to better medical care. Jules Lacour is so interesting!
What did it make me think about?
Aging, love, fidelity, racism, and friendship.
Should I read it?
This is a good novel, but not a great novel, and this is a shame because Jules is an amazing character! I found the story sometimes became bogged down by too many words. Mark Helprin writes beautifully- some passages take your breath away- but too many words can get in the way of greatness.
Quote-
“ You may not understand this until you’re much older, but to people of my age it’s a given, if one will take it, that things become a once more beautiful, more intense, and more inexplicable. You learn to see with your emotions and feel with your reason.”
If you like this try-
*How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Moshin Hamid
*Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
*The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart
Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin
394 pages
What’s it about?
This is a novel about looking back at your life. Jules Lacour lives in Paris. He is a cellist, widower, veteran of the Algerian war, and a child of the Holocaust. He finds himself aging, alone, and with a quest. He wants desperately to help his only daughter Catherine and his young grandson Luc. Luc has leukemia and Jules would like to help get the family out of Paris and to better medical care. Jules Lacour is so interesting!
What did it make me think about?
Aging, love, fidelity, racism, and friendship.
Should I read it?
This is a good novel, but not a great novel, and this is a shame because Jules is an amazing character! I found the story sometimes became bogged down by too many words. Mark Helprin writes beautifully- some passages take your breath away- but too many words can get in the way of greatness.
Quote-
“ You may not understand this until you’re much older, but to people of my age it’s a given, if one will take it, that things become a once more beautiful, more intense, and more inexplicable. You learn to see with your emotions and feel with your reason.”
If you like this try-
*How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Moshin Hamid
*Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
*The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart
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