As Paris swelters in a summer heat wave, so the cords which bind society start to fray. Cooper accurately captures the way in which individual lives and relationships are both the source of this fraying and also bear the impact of it. As the temperature recedes, some normality returns, but can't cover over the permanent impact. This affectionate but unsentimental picture of Paris and its people is slow but not gentle, dark but ultimately hopeful. 9 Mat 2018 ( )

titolo e copertina facevano pensare ad un libro leggero, comico. Una commedia.
Invece è un libro 'serio', ma non serioso.
Una piacevole scoperta! ( )

In a rundown, unfashionable part of Paris, far removed from the romance and grandeur of the City of Love a young Englishman arrives looking for a safe-haven following a family tragedy. As he tries to deal with his own inner confusion he becomes embroiled in the lives of his many neighbours and their worries, their dislikes, their uncertainties represent a sense of wider change and growing agitation in Paris as a whole.

There is so much to enjoy in These Dividing Walls. She writes with impressive assurance and clarity for a debut novel, with perfect narrative control and poise. Her characters are excellently realised, forming a diverse cast of peoples whose lives intersect and collide in their shared building, it's a dynamic that you will probably be familiar with if you have ever lived in a block of flats. These are convincingly ordinary people, living recognisable, largely unremarkable lives but Cooper writes them with real charm and sympathy, and a finely-judged dash of eccentricity so that you come to care for each of them in spite of their flaws and pettiness. They're amusing infuriating, heart-breaking and most importantly they are believable, because this is not just a charming, light-hearted tale about neighbourhood relations, it's also a book of clever contrasts that sheds thoughtful light on the sides of Paris more at home in the headlines than the picture postcards.

"Oh, Edward," one character sighs towards the end, "the myths we make for ourselves," and this theme defines many of the contrasts that Cooper contracts between the real and the imaginary, the simplified ideal and the complex reality. There's subtlety and insight in the way that the grandeur of the Louvre and Monmatre with homelessness, unemployment and the struggle to make ends meet in the dilapidated streets where Edward settles. These daily struggles weigh on her characters and the new Muslim family moving into the building become easy targets for hostility and frustration. These issues are sensitively unpicked as fear and tension rise with a new terror attack at Notre Dame and the violent response of the Far Right. She convincingly demonstrates the all-too-easy drift into extremism for those looking for someone to blame and it rings very true both for those characters who watch on from the periphery in horror or vindication and for those swept up more directly in the flow of hatred. My only reservation with this aspect of the story is that there is so little of the Labiris (the new Muslim residents) whose perspective could have contributed so much.

The way that innocuous personal narratives are woven with violence and terrorism is remarkably true to the way these things really touch most people, shockingly but often peripherally and life goes on in spite of them. Edward struggles with his personal grief and forges new relationships far from home while his neighbours struggle with failing marriages, unorthodox relationships, loneliness and mental illness. And yet despite it all this is not a dark book. It's full of characters I became fond of and is often astute and touching in equal measure. It offers a lot of hope without denying that there is darkness in people. A warm and ultimately uplifting story ( )

These Dividing Walls takes the reader on a journey into the lives of the inhabitants of an apartment block in arrondissement Paris, drifting seamlessly from one character’s perspective to another. Meet among others, Edward and Frédérique, both stricken by grief; depressed and emaciated mother of three Anais and her absent husband Paul; Chantal and her lost and disillusioned husband César Vincent; Madame Marin, the gardienne who runs a hairdressing salon in the courtyard and slips out in the night; the hate ridden Isabelle Duval, and Josef, the vagrant who sleeps in the doorway opposite. Through this cast of quirky and troubled characters the various attitudes to be expected in any social mix, from tolerance through prejudice to extremism, are explored.

The writing is exquisite and discursive. The narrative meanders, rich with incidental details and acute observations, Cooper’s strength, her ability to enter into the souls of her characters. Frédérique seeks “a world beyond the bourgeois formalities cradled within these walls…everything that has suffocated her before in its intensity turned now a cushion against pain; scar tissue around her heart.”

The use of the present tense brings an immediacy to the story, focusing the mind of the reader on the characters in close proximity. Through it, Cooper, invites the reader to ponder the inane and banal aspects of prejudice.

These Dividing Walls is a slow read that contains few surprises. The portrayal of terror and reprisal bleeds into the narrative, growing ever larger, vying for centre stage, seeking to oust the much larger and more poignant story of grief. Contemporary fiction is difficult to write, for the risk is always that themes appear stuck on, worked into something already in existence. Cooper manages to achieve a good balance, using the weather – Paris endures a June heat wave – to full and dramatic effect. Ultimately, it is the weather that binds this story and makes it work. ( )

A young man arrives in Paris seeking respite from his grief, surrounding himself in the solitude of an attic flat loaned from a friend. Alongside him, his neighbours are happy and unhappy, they are getting by, they are lying to loved ones, lying to themselves. ‘These Dividing Walls’ by Fran Cooper is a multi-layered story of microcosm and macrocosm, of an apartment block in Paris and its inhabitants, of city-wide anti-immigrant protests.
A wave of racist violence enters the centre of Paris and the unfolding events are told through the lives of the residents at Number 37. Their lives converge and depart from each other, some are socially-minded, others watch from behind curtains. The young mother stretched so thin in the care of her three young children that she fears she will break. The banker who lost his job but is too ashamed to tell his wife. The homeless man who sleeps in a doorway on the street nearby. The silver-haired seller of art books who mourns her dead son. A young couple, new residents at Number 37, lock their door and turn off the television. The lives of all these people are affected by the xenophobic hatred which enters their street.
‘These Dividing Walls’ is at once a tender story and a violent one. Cooper writes with a love for Paris, a city she knows well, and this knowledge is in every sentence. A fond familiarity with Paris shines off every page, gently done, without shouting. The best book I have read this year.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ ( )