The Paris Hours by Alex George

Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication date: May 5th 2020
Pages: 272

In The Paris Hours, the reader is introduced to a colorful cast of characters all living in Paris in 1927; Souren, an Armenian puppeteer, Camille, the maid of famous writer Marcel Proust,  Guillame, who is tailed by some shady people who want money from him to pay of a debt in just three days or else,  Jean Paul, a journalist. The thing that the four have in common is that they all are in a search of something they lost. Further on the connection between them is a bit lost too in the book, untill the end where somehow the plot and the characters make a strange connection finally and then it is suddenly the end. For instance, Camille is searching the whole story for a personal notebook written by Proust which she kept under her matrass, untill her husband found it and sold it to a local Parisian bookshop, and now Camille has to search in all the bookshop that buy books in to find the notebook that has a secret in it, only to finally find the notebook in the end, and then it is burned to make sure the secret never comes out. Further on the other characters all have their own little personal story of loss, but not one of them was very interesting. Jean Luc is looking for his lost love, and Souren''s story is more about the war he escaped and the story of what lead him to Paris. All of them never get really that interesting for the reader, and the plot lacks something plot twisting that keeps you hooked till the last page, and all the famous historical characters the author weaved into the story didn't help with that. It just misses something interesting, alltough I liked the author's style of writing and the Paris backdrop that was realistic and very lively though. 

But overall this was a book that I expected more from.