The 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Philippe Blondel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another delightful offering from New Vessel Press. I loved Blondel’s second novel, Expose, so much I immediately sought this one out.
6:41 is similar, as a ruminative exploration inside the minds of two main characters, who have met in the past and re-encounter each other years later. Cecile and Philippe had been lovers twenty-seven years before, and it ended badly. The only empty seat in a crowded morning commuter train is beside Cecile, and Philippe sits down. They recognize each other, but do not acknowledge the fact, each absorbed in their own memory of their history with each other, and since. Cecile, once a plain, undistinguished, but sharp and smart girl, is now a chic, stylish, CEO of a thriving cosmetic business; Philippe was once a handsome, feckless young man, and is now a morose, divorced, paunchy television salesman. How they have changed! For the better? Maybe. Maybe not. And how did their short-lived love affair steer them into the courses they have chosen, or that they have yielded to? Will they speak? Can there be repentance, forgiveness, hope, dismissal?
No one knows if this will be a good thing.
While I think I liked Exposed better, this one is staying with me, and I’m still thinking about Cecile and Philippe. And I am going to see if I can get these two books in the original French, for as smoothly precise as the translation seems to be, I am enticed to see how they read as they were written by the gifted Blondel.
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