Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost, David Hoon Kim
Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost, David Hoon Kim
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Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost

Author: David Hoon Kim

Narrator: Joji Otani-Hansen

Unabridged: 6 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 08/03/2021


Synopsis

When Fumiko emerges after one month of being locked in her dorm room, she’s already dead, leaving behind a half-smoked Marlboro Light and a cupboard of petrified food. For her boyfriend, Henrik Blatand, an aspiring translator, these
remnants are clues, propelling him forward in a search for meaning. Meanwhile, Fumiko, or perhaps her doppelgänger, reappears—in line at the Louvre, on street corners and subway platforms, and on the dissection table of a group of medical students.

Henrik’s inquiry expands beyond Fumiko’s seclusion and death, across the absurd, entropic streets of Paris and the figures who wander them, from a jaded group of Korean expats, to an eccentric French widow, to the indelible woman whom
Henrik finds sitting in his seat on a train. It drives him into the shadowy corners of his past, where his adoptive Danish parents raised him in a house without mirrors. And it mounts to a charged intimacy shared with his best friend’s precocious daughter, who may be haunted herself.

David Hoon Kim’s debut is a transgressive, darkly comic novel about becoming lost and found in translation. With each successive, echoic chapter, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost plunges us more deeply beneath the surface of things, to the displacement, exile, grief, and desire that hide in plain sight.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Janelle on September 25, 2021

This novel is divided into three sections; Fumiko, Before Fumiko and After Fumiko so from the start the timeline is displaced. It’s mostly written from the point of view of Henrik, a Danish language student studying in Paris. He was adopted as a baby and is of Japanese heritage. Fumiko was his girlf......more

Goodreads review by Mitch on May 07, 2021

OK I'm very conflicted here because I think if the three sections of this book were three not-really-connected novellas, I would have liked them a little more. But they're not so...my main thing is that the first section (which I mostly really liked) sets up such a huge, purposefully mysterious even......more

Goodreads review by Pop on June 30, 2021

An Anthology of Displacement This is a sneakily compelling examination of displacement in its many forms. Our main character, Henrik, is Japanese born, but adopted and raised to be Danish by native Danes. For most of the period covered by the book he is a student in Paris, training fitfully and half-h......more

Goodreads review by Audrey on September 13, 2021

probably should have looked this one up before buying it, because i agree with most of the low ratings; the first section had me interested, but by 100 pages in i felt like quitting. it's just not that compelling after the first segment......more

Goodreads review by gina on February 22, 2024

Wow. I really enjoyed this one! It's split up into three parts, before, during, and after "Fumiko," the main character Henrik's lover. Surprisingly, though, this story is not about Fumiko at all. Rather, its structure is merely punctuated by her death as if to say, life goes on. As I said in my midwa......more