Four and a half weeks have gone by in a split second. I find that, as my shoulder continues to heal, I can now use my right hand for brief periods if I'm careful. I was planning to share my top ten list for 2017 today. Until, that is, I discovered Mark Helprin. I just had to give this glorious book, "Paris in the Present Tense," the full treatment.
I'm quite sure that my friend Andrea Carter recommended one of his novels to me several years ago, either "Winter's Tale," or "In Sunlight and in Shadow." I regret not having gotten to either of them yet. Helprin has such a lush, lyrical style of writing that it's a perfect fit for a love story set in Paris. And, no, this is not your typical love story but rather a lengthy ode to joy, the joy of living a full life, of appreciation for the smallest pleasures and the greatest of beauties, and of course, it is a book about loss.
Jules Lacour may now be one of the most fully realized literary figures that I've met this year. I love and admire him. A seventy-four year man, a cellist, a teacher at the Sorbonne, and a composer, Jules is a man devoted to his wife though she's long dead of cancer, his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson Luc. Jules is a creature of habit. His grueling exercise regime keeps him fit, a responsibility to his progeny that he takes very seriously.
A Jew who doesn't believe in God, Jules was born in an attic over a bakery in Reims where he and his parents hid from the Germans for four years. This fact and what happened to them even as the city was being liberated informed Jules' life. He wanted little, aimed less for wealth and fame than for satisfaction and the ineffable quality of the deep love he found with his wife Jacqueline.
But suddenly Jules finds that he needs money, more money than he has ever dreamed of earning, and he suffers the guilt of a man who realizes that his choice of a life of happiness over one of greedy accrual has left his family vulnerable. Now he must devise a way, by any means necessary, to provide a legacy that will enable his daughter to travel the world in search of the best medical care for little Luc.
Helprin's narrative flows like a piece of music. Just as Jules' very being thrums with notes, so the novel moves, adagio then allegro, then back again in a pleasing rhythm of gorgeous sentences and visual set pieces. Unexpectedly there is a violent murder that reveals the politics of present tense France. Fear of Muslim immigration rears its ugly head, as does the new wave of anti-Semitism plaguing Paris and other major cities around the world. And still, profound acts of love prevail.
All I have to decide now is whose book gets bumped from my top ten list so that Helprin's can be added. This novel would lend itself to a nuanced, complex book discussion.
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