Tag Archives: paris

paris trance by geoff dyer | cover image by audrey bardou

this book arrived the other week. i must’ve had a reason for ordering it off amazon but i have no idea what that reason was, what the influence was, where i’d even heard of it or it’s author, geoff dyer. that often happens.

one review from the inside page stood out. it said: ‘our greatest living author.’ those are big shoes, i thought.

i started reading it. in two sittings, it was finished.

there a no chapters, the only major breaking points are flash forwards. this book is about a chapter in four lives, extracted from the book of whole lives, chapter 28 say, a single slice of life-pie.

the course of the four characters lives, though unspectacular are interesting and insightful, defining in their simplicity and normality. there is unflinching drug use, there is descriptions of intimate sexual deeds (possibly less than the author originally intended #.) but the beauty of this book is the way these merge seamlessly with the every day, the cooking of meals, the football game in the factory lunchbreak. throughout the book, relationships change subtly, divisions become apparent, human evolution dictates we can’t continue living one way forever. so that’s just what happens – change. continuing life and time and relationships and futures. it’s a melancholic end, unconclusive. a drifting end that implies just how it is…life moves on.