Destination: Paris

Book: An Unexpected Guest by Anne Korkeakivi

Reading An Unexpected Guest is  like standing on the shore watching the waves.  As much as it seems to be just one single mass of water, it changes composition each time it comes in, stirring sand, moving shells closer to the land, and stealing things away as it rolls out again.

That is the nature of this story by Anne Korkeakivi about Clare, a British diplomat’s wife in Paris.  We see a placid surface as her activities roll along routinely –making lists and checking off errands.  But beneath the surface riptides of memories lurk to drag her into the past. “Time rained down on Clare. Twenty-five years of pretending Ireland did not exist.”

If you are a fan of Virginia Woolf, you will immediately see Mrs. Dalloway transported from London to Paris, preparing her dinner party while other parts of her life threaten to implode.  Not only does the structure follow a first-person narrative set in a twenty-four-hour time period, but the same kind of revelation of character by inner dialogue runs the show.  And yet, Korkeakivi puts her own stamp on the story-a woman confronting a triad of complications threatening to upset the ordinary routine.

Past: A youthful love affair that led to an illegal act that possibly damaged other people.

Present: A rebellious teenaged son.

Future: The possibility of advancement for her husband if he secures an appointment as British ambassador to Ireland.

Complication: Her regretted past took place in Ireland. While she works to support her husband’s aims–pick flowers with a reminder of Ireland, wear the large green ring she inherited to remind of her own Irish roots–she fears Ireland and has avoided it for decades, afraid that someone will recognize her from the past.  She is haunted, it turns out, by an oh-too-real ghost.

For the traveler who reads, An Unexpected Guest brings Paris to life.  As the American wife of the British diplomat runs her errands buying flowers, choosing asparagus, getting her hair done, dropping by the Rodin museum where she works as a translator, we see bits of Paris and Parisian life that are not always on the tourist’s radar. Even in the passing scene, past and present mingle.

The driver whipped them around the Place de la Concorde. From the backseat she watched a throng of cars in all shapes and sizes join them into the centrifugal force exuded by the traffic circle, pulling them in too close to one another, then flinging them out along the Rue Royale or the Champs Elysées or, in their own case, the Cours la Reine.  This was where Louis XVI and, shortly after, Marie Antoinette lost their heads, when the Place trembled not from the weight of small speeding cars but the ill-shod feet of angry republicans.  Clare rubbed her neck.  The guillotine wasn’t supposed to be painful. But still.

The author’s website provides a small map with some of the locales marked.

The characters from Clare herself to her obnoxious teen son to the grouchy Scottish cook and a French hair dresser are all drawn sharply.  The story fascinates as we join Clare in thinking how small actions, insignificant in themselves, built to a sometimes amazing climax.

I found the book fascinating, although sometimes the brilliant clockwork of the structure tended to demand more attention than the heroine’s dilemma. How do you hide such an intricate structure? Should the novelist even try? Ultimately, the most important thing is that it was an engrossing story and one that left me with food for thought. Not to mention romance in Paris.

Note: The publisher provided the book for review, a standard practice that does not affect what I write.  I have provided links to Amazon for your convenience, and so that you can show your support for A Traveler’s Library.  I get a few cents for any purchase you make through those links.