I cannot remember who recommended this novel to me, or if I just read a review of it somewhere. In either case, it proved to be one of those rare books that I marched right back to the library after reading a bit less than half way through. Set in Paris in the 20s and 30s, it features a strange assortment of characters including an impoverished American journalist, an equally impoverished Hungarian photographer, an extraordinarily athletic cross-dressing lesbian (based on the real Violet Morris, a later Nazi collaborator), a lot of alcoholics and opium addicts, and a variety of other decadent misfits. Except that they all seem to fit in and there were apparently no monogamous heterosexuals or morally conscientious residents in the City of Lights in that era, or at least in this story. As I flipped through some of the later chapters, reading the first and last paragraphs, it didn’t seem to get any better, so I gave up. Besides, there is a lot of curling to watch on the tube.
The format is confusing with letters from the Hungarian photographer to his parents interspersed with supposedly researched observations by the author and other chapters narrated by a variety of other characters.
Even if the writing and the story improves dramatically in the second half that I did not read, I cannot recommend this unrealistic story, although critics have raved about its literary merit. But then again, maybe I just have underdeveloped or atrophic literary taste buds.
The Passionate Reader 