Review: I Remember Paris: the captivating new novel from the author of Anything Could Happen

I Remember Paris: the captivating new novel from the author of Anything Could Happen by Lucy Diamond
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

This is kind of two stories in one.

Jess Bright is a recently divorced mother of three teenage girls. A journalist, her writing tends to be of the agony aunt/humorous blog about her family life which was always dismissed by her ex-husband (a sports' writer) as frivolous. So when she gets approached to write the biography of famous artist Adelaide Fox, who now lives in Paris, she jumps at the chance, she briefly lived and worked in Paris before she was married and has fond memories of the city.

Adelaide Fox was a ground-breaker, a rebel, an enfant terrible. Now old, her former husband dead for over twenty years and what appears to be impending Parkinson's disease, her life has become smaller and she has become less tolerant.

There are mysteries in both Jess and Adelaide's pasts. Did Adelaide's stalker really commit suicide, and in such a bizarre fashion, or was there something more sinister? Why did Adelaide fall out with her best friend and why have never spoken again? What happened to Jess' best friend in Paris, Pascale who disappeared one day and was never heard from again?

At first Jess and Adelaide have quite an antagonistic relationship, Adelaide wants to use the biography to settle old scores with everyone who has ever wronged her and doesn't appreciate Jess' questions about other things, or her suggestions that Adelaide should talk about happier events in her life as well. Nevertheless, as they work together Adelaide finds she sees the past with new eyes.

Although there is a romance, this is very much women's' fiction, two women revisiting their pasts and learning things about each other. I did enjoy it, and Lucy Diamond's writing is always excellent, but in some ways I felt having both Adelaide and Jess' stories somewhat diluted events. There were lots of little side episodes which didn't really go anywhere (like Jess' extremely irritating daughter who seemed to be a plot device), I wanted Jess to be an almost invisible presence, teasing Adelaide's life story out of her, and I just didn't feel we got enough of Adelaide's life.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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