Book Review: Metro Stop Paris

Metro Stop Paris by Gregor Dallas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Walking through my local library recently, I happened upon a book that rang out with familiarity, immediately transporting me back to my one summer in Paris three years ago in which I stood outside the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore near Notre Dame and listed to a memorable little Englishman read his work to attentive bibliophiles, and passersby.

That author, Gregor Dallas, opens his book with an appeal for his meandering approach to French history, writing, "The more history I wrote, the more I realized that history is travelling: if you don't see the places where the major events of the past occurred, you get lost in the abstractions, system-building and theories that have so distorted our view of the past over the last few decades...some historians write history as if the event they describe could have occurred anywhere on the globe."

Unfortunately, while the process of writing the book may have invoked a travelers romanticism for its author, Dallas does not likewise fully immerse and gratify his readers’ senses--his descriptions of physical place are superficial at best, and the use of the Paris metro stops is never illustrative and well justified. Often, Dallas begins with a brief description of space couched in an argument for its philosophical importance—lost in beautiful abstractions about creativity and life and death—and then he too quickly deviates into historical accounts, no longer orienting readers around street corners let alone near the metro stop names that serve as each chapter title.

Still, consider this a mere packaging problem. It does not hurt the book once one lays aside the expectation for a sensorial ride through underground Paris. What shines in the book is the way it lays together many Parisian stories (depicting everyone from Oscar Wilde to Catherine de Medici and Sartre to Debussy), allowing them to play a part in a larger epic narrative. Where Dallas misses opportunities to unite a sense of place, he more than compensates with his insight into character. One begins to imagine time layered on top of itself, and its major players read like the Gods of Greek mythology.

So, while the book is not a complete success (and perhaps ends too abruptly), it does manage to make lives jump from the page, and serves as a meeting place for those who have been there and can remember the sights and smells enough to indulge in their own memories, and feel like part of a story greater than their own.




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