I can see that choosing to focus more on the 1875-1940 thread of the novel allowed Rutherfurd to develop more complex storylines, but unfortunately his characters are just not strong enough to make this new format work.

There was nothing prior to the 13th century so the Romans were completely ignored, Napoleon was barely mentioned at all, and I also couldn’t believe that we were only given one short, thinly plotted chapter on the French Revolution. However, I was disappointed that some of the earlier periods in France’s history were given very little attention at the expense of the Belle Époque chapters. There’s a chapter telling the story of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, for example, and another set in the city’s Jewish community in the 14th century. Interspersed with this main storyline are several chapters in which we go further back in time and meet some of the earlier generations of our six families. The personal stories of all of these people and their ancestors are cleverly woven around the events that shaped the history of Paris. And finally, a Jewish family, the Jacobs, and the Renards, who are merchants. There’s the aristocratic Roland de Cygne and his enemy, the revolutionary Jacques Le Sourd. Next, there’s Thomas Gascon, an iron worker, and his charismatic younger brother, Luc. First, there’s the bourgeois Blanchard family – Jules Blanchard, the owner of the Josephine department store, and his three children, Gerard, Marc and Marie. Most of these characters are introduced in the first few chapters of the book and belong to six families, all of different social classes and political backgrounds. In this book we concentrate on one set of characters who are living in Paris during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the era known as the Belle Époque). With all of his other novels, Rutherfurd has followed the same format: beginning in the distant past then moving forward chronologically through the centuries, he attempts to tell the story of a city or a country’s entire history by following several families down through the generations. Of all the new books being published this year, this is one that I’ve really been looking forward to, having read and enjoyed all seven of Edward Rutherfurd’s previous books – my two personal favourites, Sarum, set in and around the English city of Salisbury, and Russka, which covers almost two thousand years of Russian history his other two ‘big city’ novels, London and New York (probably the two I’ve enjoyed the least) his two books on the history of Ireland, Dublin and Ireland Awakening and The Forest, the story of England’s New Forest.Īfter reading all of those, I thought I knew exactly what to expect from Paris but I was surprised to find that I was wrong.

London edward rutherfurd summary