Book review: Paris Echo, by Sebastian Faulks

The Paris of Sebastian Faulks is a city in which voices from the past echo disturbingly, a city also where every Metro station has a story behind its name. One of the novel’s epigraphs comes from Kafka: “The Metro furnishes the best opportunity for the foreigner to imagine that he has understood the essence of Paris.” So enjoyment of this dazzling if also at times darkly bleak novel will be enhanced if you read it with a plan of the Paris Metro to hand: it will help you keep track of the movements of the principal characters.