A mawkish story is rescued by its own authenticity

Paris Echo is Sebastian Faulks’s third France-set novel, but he avoids an entirely romantic gaze of Parisian life, thanks in large part to this Moroccan narrator

Sebastian Faulks: his third novel set in France manages to avoid an entirely romantic view of Parisian life Pic: Tony O’Shea

Fiction: Paris Echo, By Sebastian Faulks, Hutchinson, €17.50

There comes a moment in Sebastian Faulks’s latest novel when a character unwittingly delivers the real nub of the story. “The closeness of other people who were fond of her hadn’t been enough,” observes Hannah of a Parisian woman who’d dabbled in sex work during World War II. “She had needed more. She’d wanted to be known, known intimately, as herself, for herself – even ...