Impossible City

March 4, 2024
Financial Times reporter Kuper (Chums), a self-professed “naive explorer” who moved to Paris 20-odd years ago, serves up an eclectic survey of the city’s peculiarities and charms. Covering traditionally “French” topics, the author comments on Parisian fashion, flirtations, and such quotidian complaints as the city’s bad traffic (“Parisians... should never have been allowed to drive”). On a more serious note, he interrogates the dark side of France’s reputation for sexual permissiveness, recalling how the #MeToo movement gained traction in 2017 and 2018 but was opposed by some older women who pined for the “good old days” of so-called “sexual freedom.” Elsewhere, he delves into a spate of antisemitic attacks in the 2000s and 2010s, though by and large praises the city’s multiculturalism. In self-aware prose shot through with droll wit, Kuper renders Paris’s triumphs and challenges alongside more mundane yet no less revealing moments (when his wife asks his building manager if his kids can play in the courtyard on weekends, she’s told, “You are an American, so you do not understand, but what you want is unthinkable”—because, the author surmises, Paris is “for adults”). It’s a loving and illuminating ode to the City of Light.

April 1, 2024
A look behind the myths and postcards of the City of Light. Writing about Paris can easily become a parade of references to old movies and flowery evocations of the Belle �poque, but Kuper, an experienced journalist and author of Chums and The Happy Traitor, avoids the cliches in his account of the practical issues of living there. More than two decades ago, he moved there for a prosaic reason: It was more affordable than London. The central city of Paris, he notes, is surprisingly small, with about 2 million people crammed into mostly small apartments on narrow streets. A ring road called the P�riph�rique separates it, both literally and symbolically, from the sprawling suburbs, home to 10 million people. Though Kuper finds many positive things to say about the city, he is unafraid of pointing out the flaws, including the awful traffic and strangling bureaucracy. The city long thought of itself as the center of the world, but the author detects a recent retreat into nostalgia and insularity. Nevertheless, Paris still has wonderful food and drink, and the people, once you learn the social codes and rules, can be surprisingly agreeable. Ironically, the Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for revival, with the local government creating more pedestrian-only spaces and upgrading the neglected parks. This has grown into "a gargantuan plan known as 'Grand Paris, '" aiming to link the center with the suburbs. In 2024, the Paris Olympics will provide an opportunity to highlight the rejuvenation of the city. The author is glad to see it, but he hopes that Paris does not lose its unique character. His affection for Paris shines throughout the text, making it an enjoyable, balanced read. With a dry wit and a journalist's eye, Kuper unravels the layered past and looks to the complex future of Paris.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2024
Today's Paris comprises two different cities. The old Haussmann arrondisements of palaces, monuments, cafes, and tourist sites still function much as they have for decades, but the populace grows daily more diverse. The burgeoning suburbs beyond the Boulevard P�riph�rique house even greater diversity, including emigrants from former French colonies and refugees from around the world. British sportswriter Kuper (Soccer against the Enemy, 2010) moved to Paris and raised a family in the old Marais section, where he encountered longtime Parisians who quickly educated him in the city's unique habits and folkways. By enrolling his children in youth soccer leagues, he became friendly with a French Senegalese fellow soccer dad, bonding over the horror of the recent Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. He got to know Krishna, an unhoused man from Guyana who engaged him in philosophical debate. Kuper's trenchant, emotionally moving insights into Parisians' lives offer a very humane portrait of Parisians trying to build productive lives for themselves and their offspring in a complicated metropolis far removed culturally, politically, socially, and geographically from their homelands.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.