The prowess of his storytelling makes [Faulks] a graceful guide ... Cunningly crafted, Faulks’s fictional bridge between the French past and present — and, discreetly, between Jewish and Arab legacies — has its sentimental side ... most readers will forgive him the novelistic sleight-of-hand that brings his people, and his histories, together.
The merit of the book is its plot, the constituent parts turning in different directions before falling into place ... Not quite magic realism, the novel veers close to the mawkish time-travel territory of the 1990s TV series Goodnight Sweetheart.. This is a puzzling novel, not entirely successful in its voices and devices, but brimming with Faulks’s deep affection for Paris.
Heading home and in a final twist skirting danger, Tariq is one of Mr. Faulks’s most memorable charmers—his fiction abounds in them—and Paris Echo, for all its tragedy, one of his most buoyant novels, flawlessly paced and deftly constructed. Here this agile writer... moves gracefully back and forth between shadow and light, weaving together disparate stories but never too neatly.
Paris Echo offers an eye-opening account not just of the hypocrisies of occupied Paris, but of the heinous treatment of Arabs by the French, and the interesting parallels between them. However, the set-up for all this (Tariq and Hannah sharing a flat) is less convincing ... There is much to learn from Paris Echo about the city’s complex identity, and about the way we view the past. However, without deeply compelling characters — or a powerful love affair — it can be difficult to connect with this story on a truly visceral, emotional level.
This is a profound and moving novel about two disparate people forgetting their differences, pooling their resources and appreciating the world afresh in a remarkable city. Paris is so well mapped and chronicled that it emerges as a third character. Faulks prudently resists presenting a soft-focus tourist-friendly depiction. Tariq’s peregrinations take him into the shabbier migrant suburbs and into the shadows of Algerian conflict. Hannah’s forays into the past unearth stories of courage and fortitude but also of betrayal, complicity and injustice — one of which chills her and challenges her moral outlook.
A conventional, but well-made novel. Faulks knows which strings to pull to make his themes — historical, political and personal — synchronise ... One ends up feeling moved more by Faulks’s Paris — its beauty, romance, history and complexity — than by the characters ... Faulks knows better than to mess with a classic recipe.
Much of this material is shocking and controversial and could easily make a non-fiction book in itself ... a stimulating read ... as erudite as it enjoyable.
This unlikely pair [of Tariq and Hannah] grabs the reader from the start, so that one wonders what brings them to Paris, whether their paths will cross and, if so, how ... There is nothing schematic about Faulks' handling of these two lives, which may at first seem so disparate ... Faulks has stirred a rich brew with Paris Echo, one that is also spiked with wit.
Leisurely paced but enveloping...Faulks offers a subtle but affecting portrait of friendship while exploring the immense difficulty of making sense of the larger world.
A briskly told and engaging novel...the prose is workmanlike, even dull at times, never rising to the lyrical heights of books whose subject matter this shares...voices are occasionally unconvincing ...Most unfortunately, the novel's twists are easy to see coming. Still, this is an entertaining novel with memorable characters.
