Number 37 has its stories: in this it is like any building. For what building doesn't have secrets? How much does anyone know of what goes on behind their neighbours' doors?
Far back on Paris' Left Bank, in a secret quarter, Edward arrives at an empty attic room for the summer. On the floors below him are the residents of number 37: César, a banker hiding his redundancy from his wife, lives adjacent to Isabelle, a bitter HR manager; Madame Marin, the gossiping hairdresser lives below Anaïs, a young mother on the edge; and Frédérique, a bohemian bookshop owner, takes her daily tea with Josef, the ever watching homeless man over the road.
Edward arrives in their midst having fled from his home in England, from his mother, whose dementia is worsening, his father, consumed with grief and hiding it badly, and from the gaping hole the death of his sister has left. He hopes that Paris will be a distraction, that he will mend and heal. And though he befriends some young, politically-minded French students, he is drawn back to the residents of number 37, as between its walls secrets are revealed and true natures unmasked, and relationships blossom and falter.
As the summer heat becomes stifling, members of the new Far Right hand out pamphlets in bars and rally in squares, until tensions reach boiling point and terror strikes in the heart of Paris, and number 37's deepest secrets are revealed.
These Dividing Walls is a striking debut novel by a compelling new author.
In a forgotten corner of Paris stands a building.
Within its walls, people talk and kiss, laugh and cry; some are glad to sit alone, while others wish they did not. A woman with silver blonde hair opens her bookshop downstairs, an old man feeds the sparrows on his windowsill, and a young mother wills the morning to hold itself at bay. Though each of their walls touches someone else's, the neighbours they pass in the courtyard remain strangers.
Into this courtyard arrives Edward. Still bearing the sweat of a channel crossing, he takes his place in an attic room to wait out his grief.
But in distant corners of the city, as Paris is pulled taut with summer heat, there are those who meet with a darker purpose. As the feverish metropolis is brought to boiling point, secrets will rise and walls will crumble both within and without number thirty-seven...
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Author bio
Fran Cooper grew up in London before reading English at Cambridge and Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She spent three years in Paris writing a PhD, and currently works in the curatorial department of a London museum. These Dividing Walls is her first novel.
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In a Paris tense with summer heat, anger and hate drive its people to drastic action, in this intensely satisfying and timely novel of a city in crisis.
