Book Review: Two Tales About Two Cities

I recently finished two books that are both written with a common theme – a city forms a major element in the storyline. The two cities being Paris & Mumbai, of course. The commonality ended there though. The authors have written diametrically opposite books about these unique cities. One is a historical fiction which gets as real and dirty as possible, and the other is a romantic fiction where things happen to warm your heart.

Surely if someone has moved to Paris in October 2020, the first pop-culture reference to come up is the Netflix series Emily In Paris. But for me, a book called out louder! “The Paris Wife” written by Paula McLain is based on the real-life of Ernest Hemingway. He kick-started his writing career in Paris and found the first few successes of his career in the works he had created here. It felt right to understand Paris from a behind-the-scenes lens of what led to igniting Hemingway’s literary genius.

The book, perhaps as would be expected, is not all roses and coffees, and chance encounters with handsome neighbours. It’s grimy and real. It takes you through a troubled marriage and the evolution of an artist’s dilemmas. It poignantly reveals the pain that war inflicts on the minds of the survivors, well after it is over. It is frustration personified to read about the nativity of a wife who knows she’s being a doormat in the relationship. Yet, she makes no qualms about it – she knows her existence is in the shadow of “his work.” The book meanders across cities and their life together. But it’s heart, much like Hemingway’s writing, is in Paris. Paris is where he finds his art, Paris is where she finds the limits of her love, and Paris is Paris.

There is glamour and gore in equal measure, in both the city and the book. “The Paris Wife” is listed as one of the top 10 books to read about Paris, and I can wholeheartedly endorse that view. You may hate it, hate her, hate him (ok no book-lover can really hate Hemingway), but you can’t deny that it is an interesting read based on the premise of a city having its own essence & character.

And just after finishing this book, I moved on to a book about the city I most recently called home – Mumbai.

“Paper Moon” written by Rehana Munir is almost an exact opposite experience in book reading. This fictional tale takes you on a ride-along with a bibliophile in Mumbai who finds herself left with an inheritance consisting of a bookshop and an entanglement of relationships that she needs to figure out for herself. An absent father, a musician mother, a love triangle, and many more complications come her way. And while she’s understanding her way around how exactly to run a bookstore, we’re taken on a ride through the streets, cafes and places in Mumbai. There’s so much unsaid in the mentioning of these places that I had to stop and recollect my own little memories.

Her Bandra bookstore with natural light through ancient windows of an old heritage bungalow and an in-house quaint cafe serving delicious baked awesomeness is definitely any booklover’s dream. But the background hero in the book is no doubt Mumbai city. From taking a weekend getaway flight to Goa to having a favourite Nariyal-Pani wala, to knowing which dish to order in which little restaurant in Bandra-Khar, there is an element of the quintessential “Mumbai Girl” in everything that happens in the book. There are hardships and difficult situations of course, but the heroine overcomes them. It’s a happy book at the end of the day, and more like watching a rom-com where you know, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The books you read are a reflection of what’s happening in your own life sometimes. In all honesty, there’s not much in common between the two books, and yet they capture perfectly the frame of mind that I’m in these days. It’s fitting that I picked a “real” book for the city I have to live in now, and a happy-nostalgic fictional tale for the city that lives in my memory.

If you were to pick a city as one of the characters in your book, which one would it be?
The one you live in? The one you used to live in? Or the one you wish you lived in?

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