Edward Rutherfurd - Paris: A Novel

96 kbps, Unabridged, Read by Jean Gilpin
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/paris-edward-rutherfurd/1112251623?ean=9780385535304

Overview
From the grand master of the historical novel comes a dazzling, epic portrait of the City of Light

Internationally bestselling author Edward Rutherfurd has enchanted millions of readers with his sweeping, multigenerational dramas that illuminate the great achievements and travails throughout history. In this breathtaking saga of love, war, art, and intrigue, Rutherfurd has set his sights on the most magnificent city in the world: Paris.

Moving back and forth in time across centuries, the story unfolds through intimate and vivid tales of self-discovery, divided loyalties , passion, and long-kept secrets of characters both fictional and real, all set against the backdrop of the glorious city—from the building of Notre Dame to the dangerous machinations of Cardinal Richlieu; from the glittering court of Versailles to the violence of the French Revolution and the Paris Commune; from the hedonism of the Belle Époque, the heyday of the impressionists, to the tragedy of the First World War; from the 1920s when the writers of the Lost Generation could be found drinking at Les Deux Magots to the Nazi occupation, the heroic efforts of the French Resistance, and the 1968 student revolt.

With his unrivaled blend of impeccable research and narrative verve, Rutherfurd weaves an extraordinary narrative tapestry that captures all the glory of Paris. More richly detailed, more thrilling, and more romantic then anything Rutherfurd has written before, Paris: The Novel wonderfully illuminates hundreds of years in the City of Light and Love and brings the sights, scents, and tastes of Paris to sumptuous life.

Library Journal
Paris, anyone? Yes, several centuries of the City of Light here, for readers who love their sagas long and drenched in history. Rutherfurd (New York) presents a panoramic view of the city on the Seine through several intertwining stories that span the period from the 13th century to 1968. Tales of counts and commoners alike appear in these pages. Thomas Gaston, an enterprising young man from the then distant suburb of Montmartre, lands a job with sculptor Frédéric-August Bartholdi on the Statue of Liberty, then later with engineer Gustav Eiffel on the building of the landmark Eiffel Tower. One of the most appealing features of this carefully researched work are the interesting tidbits and factoids scattered throughout; for example, the Eiffel Tower was erected from prefabricated parts. With a cast of fictional characters rubbing shoulders with the great and famous in cameo appearances, readers have a front-row seat to observe Parisian life over the ages. A drawback: the voices sometimes sound too contemporary or modern for the era in question.

Kirkus Reviews
Overstuffed yarn of the ville lumière from city-hopping epic-smith Rutherfurd (New York, 2009, etc.). Rutherfurd's latest is billed as Paris: The Novel, a designation with which the shades of Émile Zola and Victor Hugo might take issue. A novel, maybe--or maybe five novels rolled up into one big saucisson--but not the novel, DeMille-an or Zanuck-ian as it may sound. For Rutherfurd, the novel form seems to be an opportunity to erect a kind of scaffolding around a sequence of flash cards devoted to, in this case, the history of Paris, and there's scarcely a paragraph of exposition that is not didactic at heart. Henry Ford, he takes pains to tell us, is "the motor manufacturer" (not "a motor manufacturer"), just so we're sure we're not talking about Henry Ford the doughnut baron of Chillicothe. The Knights Templar, for anyone who hasn't read kindred spirit Dan Brown (though Rutherfurd is far and away the better writer), "were the guardians of huge deposits in many lands. From there, it was only a step to being bankers." He even explains French to the French: "Dieudonné....It means ‘the gift of God.' " Merci pour les explications, dude. Rutherfurd layers on the symbolism with a trowel: Not for nothing does the garçon at the book's beginning share a name with a certain musketeer. And much of the writing telegraphs, passively telling rather than showing: "the thought of base blood entering the noble family of de Cygne was repugnant to him." All that said, Rutherfurd's sense of epic sweep is admirable, and any book that stretches from Caesar to May 1968 is bound to need a lot of room. For all its merits, Rutherfurd's latest is too big and too professorial for comfort--Edmund White could have written his own À la recherche du temps perdu in the same space.