(Reviewed by JD Jung)
#CommissionsEarned
“Where was French romanticism? The opulence of the West? I found Paris—Pantin, really—very different from what I had imagined. I found Pantin ugly…”.
An Albanian national flees his country in fear for his life and joins his cousin in this Paris suburb. In this story, “Patin, Really” by Timothée Demeillers, he wonders if it was even worth it.
In fact, most of the thirteen stories in Paris Noir: The Suburbs, will introduce you to the dark, gritty side of the Paris area that will strip away any fantasies you have about this city. These characters feel they don’t connect with their world except to “feel like shit together”. They include drug dealers, petty thieves, and just poor people trying to survive. Rachid Santaki’s “To My Last Breath” introduces us to the area’s turf wars. However, an exception to this, where we meet a wealthy protagonist is “The Baroness” by Marc Fernandez. Here we see that the illegal drug trade permeates all socio-economic levels of society. Readers will be alarmed with the surprise ending, like so many others in the collection. In Anne Secret’s “The Shadows of the Trapèze”, a former teacher seeks to avenge the 1972 murder of her father. After waiting so many decades she becomes as shocked as we are.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, as there are so many great stories. One for me is the bizarre “The Metamorphosis of Emma F” by Christian Roux. A hotel housekeeper tries to bring back order to the world, accusing God that he didn’t know what he was doing.
As with others in the Akashic Noir Series, the characters are ethnically diverse as are the themes of immigration, politics, and culture. Muslims express their anger that terrorism is only defined as such when committed by them in “I Am Not Paris” by Cloé Mehdi. “Who decides which procession of the dead is most tragic?”
Whenever I think that I’ve read the best in the Akashic series, stories that fully embrace the sub-genre of noir, another one comes out that blows me away. Paris Noir: The Suburbs is such a collection. In fact, I want to see if many of the authors here have other writings translated into English.
