Edward Rutherfurd Traces a City, and Her Cast of Characters, in Paris Paris: the Novel, by Edward Rutherfurd (Doubleday Canada, 809 Pages, $37.95)
Family sagas and a rich history Edward Rutherfurd traces a city, and her cast of characters, in Paris Paris: The Novel, By Edward Rutherfurd (Doubleday Canada, 809 pages, $37.95) Saturday, April 27, 2013 Down at his family's mansion in Fontainebleau at the height of La Belle Époque, a handsome young artist named Marc Blanchard remarks to an American painter friend who's visiting for the summer: "We French are so conscious of our history - it's everywhere around us - that we feel as if we have lived many times before." And with a smile, he adds: "This may be a delusion, but it's a rich one, and it gives us comfort." Blanchard is a central character in British author Edward Rutherfurd's new novel, Paris, a brick of a book that runs over 800 pages, has its own slick promo video on YouTube and is much in the vein of the other popular historical epics Rutherfurd has written: New York (2009), The Princes of Ireland (2004), The Rebels of Ireland (2006), Russka (1991) and three books on England: his debut novel, Sarum (1987), London (1997), and its follow-up, The Forest (2000). Neatly plotted tales that choose a place and weave through its centuries of history are the specialty of this bestselling (six million and counting), Cambridge- educated author. Lose your way, and you need some maps and a display of family trees to remember where everything is happening and who everyone is. Just as he has done before, Rutherfurd, now 65, provides these in the endpapers and opening pages of this, his eighth novel.
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