Paris in the Present Tense, Mark Helprin
Paris in the Present Tense, Mark Helprin
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Paris in the Present Tense

Author: Mark Helprin

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot

Unabridged: 14 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/03/2017


Synopsis

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin reveals a powerful, rapturous novel set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories.Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour―a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust―must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life with its days bright with music, family, and rowing on the Seine, Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist who is a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth.In the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin’s Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.

About Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin is the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of Paris in the Present Tense, Winter’s Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, In Sunlight and in Shadow, Freddy and Fredericka, The Pacific, Swan Lake, Ellis Island, Memoir from Antproof Case, and numerous other works.

About Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Pinchot, an Audie Award–winning narrator and Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, received his education at Yale University. He restores Greek Revival buildings and appears in television, film, and on stage whenever the pilasters and entablatures overwhelm him.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Violet on October 02, 2018

The plot lines in this novel wouldn't be out of place in a blockbuster movie. The seventy-five-year-old hero Jules Lacour, a music teacher, comes to the defence of a Hasidic Jew being attacked by three Muslims. He kills two of them and the other flees as does the Hasidic Jew. There's thus no evidenc......more

Goodreads review by Sharon on December 01, 2017

This is a haunting story of love, longing and the meaning of sacrifice. It is also a tribute to the beauty of Paris. However, the book is not just an excuse for poetic musing. It has a gripping plot that keeps you wanting to read until the last page. A tragically beautiful story by a master writer.......more

Goodreads review by Esther on September 23, 2017

'Paris in the Present Tense' surely must be written by a magician. For I don’t know who else could include on one page, in one paragraph and sometimes even in one sentence haunting memories; the reasoning of a philosopher; riffs on music musically written; asides written with such snark, Shakespeare......more


Quotes

“A modern-day story of love, music, and death, with echoes of the Nazi retreat in World War II France…A masterpiece filled with compassion and humanity. Perfect for the pure pleasure of reading.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“It is the fluidity of Helprin’s prose that makes this novel of ideas so utterly captivating.”

Booklist (starred review)

“[Mark Helprin’s] books are romances in the chivalric mold, in which beauty, love, and bravery possess a greater reality than the characters dedicated to honoring them. This is true again in his enchanting new novel, Paris in the Present Tense…This passionate and uplifting book produces a kind of music that few living writers know how to create.”

Wall Street Journal

“A twilight novel, and its love affair, essential to any Helprin work, is a complex one, haunted by time…His prose has an aching beauty.”

Boston Globe

“Rooted in history and ethical debate.”

Library Journal


Awards

  • Amazon Editors' Pick