While Harper Brown, the protagonist of Pip Drysdale’s latest book, The Paris Affair, may end the book with reservations about whether Paris is, in fact, always a good idea, I certainly have no such qualms. I love Paris, and given that I’ve been stuck more or less in my home for the last year, I’m happy to jump at any opportunity to travel to a city I love, even if it is through the pages of a book.
The Paris Affair takes us along the first-person perspective of Harper Brown who has recently accepted a job as a culture writer in Paris and is struggling to reorient the trajectory of her life after the breakdown of a long term (somewhat toxic) relationship. As a consequence, she’s somewhat cynical, and not at all interested in forging human connections—certainly not with romantic partners. From the get-go, Drysdale gives Harper a distinct voice, which meant that I really felt she was distinct as a personality. It’s a refreshing change from the manner in which many first-person narrative voices almost slide the central character to the side so that the reader can easily put themselves in the shoes of the protagonist and be really enmeshed within the world of the story. With that being said, I’m not sure I really liked Harper that much as a character. I personally don’t love it when characters endure some major heartbreak and then claim to be ‘anti love’ and ‘anti attachment’ without any self-reflection about the fact that they were badly hurt and are thus not yet in a position where they’re willing to become emotionally vulnerable. Nevertheless, there was a purpose to Harper’s attitude beyond simply falling into a particular trope, so I’m willing to overlook my own personal preferences about character.
What’s more difficult to overlook is the pacing of the narrative. The blurb of The Paris Affair promises that Harper is ‘hot on the trail of a murderer – and the scoop of a lifetime,’ but the murder in question doesn’t actually occur until at well past a third of the way through the book. Moreover, her actually ‘hopping on’ to any trail doesn’t happen until past the halfway mark (before that, she doesn’t investigate at all and the pages are taken up by her reaction to the murder which she was in some proximity to due to a confluence of events). As a result, the book lagged, and I found myself a bit baffled as to when something of note was going to occur. Perhaps it’s the fault of whoever decided upon the blurb; it set up an expectation that I looking to have met which distracted me from being able to immerse myself into the story as it was written.
With that being said, the ending and the novel’s climax were reasonably well done. The pieces fit together in a way that was clever, and did a great job of foreshadowing what was to come without ever giving it away, and it doesn’t feel like a spoiler to say that the book doesn’t engage in any male-saviour tropes, which is a refreshing change, and which I kept expecting to happen.
However, given the book devoted that much time to set up, it feels as though it should stand to reason that it would devote time to resolving all of the threads within its narrative. Unfortunately, as I turned the final page, it felt as though there were several elements left unresolved, like her relationship with her mother and the legacy of her mother’s ongoing unstable relationships, the skullduggerous actions of one of her coworkers which is never really proven beyond her own belief (although she gets other stuff wrong, so she could have gotten this wrong?), and even her blatant invasion into the privacy of the person whose apartment she’s subletting in Paris, to the point of stealing the woman’s pills with no apparent repercussion. When taken with the off pacing, it felt as though some of the book was either unfinished or unpolished, depending on your perspective.
At the end of the day, the book definitely has its problems, but I read through The Paris Affair quickly and it’s an easy read. In my opinion, that’s the most important thing about a book like this.
The Paris Affair is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up The Paris Affair? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
She thinks love can kill you. It turns out she might be right.
Meet Harper Brown…
Occupation: Arts journalist
Dream job: Hard-hitting news reporter
Location: Paris
Loves: True crime podcasts, art galleries, coffee, whiskey
Does not love: fake people, toxic positivity, being told how to live her life by smug workmates who have no life (that’s you, Stan), her narcissistic ex
Favourite book: 1984
Favourite artist: Noah X. Sometimes.
Favourite painting: Klimt’s Schubert at the Piano
Special skills: breaking out of car boots, picking locks and escaping relationships.
Superpower: She can lose any guy in three minutes flat. Ask her how.
Secret: She’s hot on the trail of a murderer – and the scoop of a lifetime.
That’s if the killer doesn’t catch her first.
