A Murder in Paris by Matthew Blake
Hi, I've just finished reading Matthew Blake's latest novel. If you remember, he wrote Anna O that I read in 2023 when it came out and I enjoyed, so I was always going to pick up his next one. This one came out a few days ago, on the third of the month. It's a novel with two timelines, a novel about love and betrayal, so you know I was always going to like it, wasn’t I?
We've got Olivia, who's a psychotherapist and a memory expert at Charing Cross Hospital. She's mom to TJ, who's six, I think. One day she receives a phone call from the French police telling her that her grandmother, the famous artist Josephine Benoir, is sitting below her most famous painting in the Hotel Luticia and confessing that she's not actually Josephine Benoir. She's Sophia Clerk, and she murdered the real Josephine in 1945 in room 11.
That's the start. Olivia knows that her grandmother's memory is in decline, but the thought that she would sit there and say she's not the person she is and confess to murder—well, you know what? So she arranges for TJ to be looked after. She's a single parent and disappears off to Paris to help her grandmother and to seek the help of her own mentor Louie, who is her grandmother's oldest friend and her therapist.
In 1945, the Hotel Luticia was used as a place for the survivors of Auschwitz to be assessed before returning to their lives. That timeline is fascinating and quite harrowing at times. The other timelines you've got are Olivia in the present when she's with her grandmother, a few months previous, and a couple of other voices that you hear from.
The novel's a bit of a roller coaster. What's intriguing is this discussion about memory. Where are we without our memories? Would we be the person we are if we didn’t have them? There’s discussion about recovered memory, implanted memory, borrowed memory, changed memory. It's totally fascinating. Josephine is suffering with a declining memory. Her short-term memories disappear, but her long-term memories are starting to peek through. So, is this long-term memory—that she murdered somebody—a real memory?
Underneath all of this are long-buried secrets. By making this confession, has Josephine reawakened or revealed something someone didn’t want to get out? Olivia herself, you find out, also has a deeply buried secret.
The setting is atmospheric. Paris is almost another character. I enjoyed the pace of the novel on the whole. There are a couple of places where it tapered off a little bit, but overall, I liked the twists, the reveals, and the setting of the Hotel Luticia. A Google search revealed that this is part of its own history—the fact that it was used at the end of the war for the survivors. That gave an air of authenticity to that whole timeline.
The discussion about memory is fascinating. When we remember things, are we remembering the real event, or has the act of constant remembering changed it? This novel gives you all sorts of things to think about while keeping you going with the story—because of the secrets, the loves, the betrayals, and the danger.
I enjoyed it. I think I might have preferred Anna O a little bit more, but this is still a cracking read. It came out at the beginning of the month—A Murder in Paris by Matthew Blake.
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