For some reason not clear to me, Rutherfurd has chosen to skip around in time, rather than follow a chronological order. Different family members will be involved in some way with key events in the location's history, and quite often the families have interactions or relationships with each other throughout the history.In this book, the families are the highborn de Cygnes the Le Sourds, pitted against the de Cygnes again and again throughout the ages the laborer/artisan Gascons the commerce-minded Blanchards the Jewish Jacobs. The families tend to be from varying levels of society, so that their stories can give a fuller view of life in the particular location of the story. He takes a few families and follows their generations through the centuries. Since then, Rutherfurd has written several more of these historical novels, about Russia, Ireland, London and New York.Rutherfurd has developed a sort of formula for these novels. I remember reading Rutherfurd's first historical epic, Sarum, and being swept away by the story of Salisbury, England and its families through the centuries. This breathtaking multigenerational saga takes readers on a journey through thousands of years of glorious Parisian history-from its founding under the Romans to the timeless love story of Abelard and Heloise against the backdrop of the building of Notre Dame to the martyrdom of Joan of Arc during the Hundred Years War to the dangerous manipulations of Cardinal Richelieu and the bloody religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants to the gilded glories of Versailles to the horrors of the French Revolution and the conquests of Napoleon to the beauty and optimism of the belle epoque when Impressionism swept the world to the hotbed of cultural activity of the 1920s and '30s that included Picasso, Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway, and the writers of the Lost Generation to the Nazi occupation and the incredible efforts of the French Resistance.Įven more richly detailed, thrilling, and romantic then anything Rutherfurd has written before, Paris: The Novel illuminates thousands of years in the City of Lights through intimate and vivid tales of characters both fictional and true, and with them, the sights, scents, and tastes of Paris come to sumptuous life.

From the grand master of the historical novel comes a dazzling epic portrait of Paris that leaps through centuries as it weaves the tales of families whose fates are forever entwined with the City of Lights.Īs he did so brilliantly in London: The Novel and New York: The Novel, Edward Rutherfurd brings to life the most magical city in the world: Paris.

Edward rutherfurd paris review