These Dividing Walls, Fran Cooper
These Dividing Walls, Fran Cooper
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These Dividing Walls
Shortlisted for the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award

Author: Fran Cooper

Narrator: Karen Cass

Unabridged: 8 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/04/2017


Synopsis

One Parisian summer
A building of separate lives
All that divides them will soon collapse...

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 37...

'Confident and brilliant. She will immerse you in a world I dare you to turn away from.' Lisa O'Donnell, author of The Death of Bees

(P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

About Fran Cooper

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 about travelling eighteenth-century artists, and currently works in the curatorial department of a London museum. These Dividing Walls is her first novel.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Whispering on February 21, 2018

Book Reviewed by Stacey on www.whisperingstories.com Whilst the setting in Paris, France might have you reaching for the book, what is inside is far more beautiful than any city could ever be. Between those creamy, orange covers is a story about life and the residents of the apartment building, Numbe......more

Goodreads review by Sandra on April 18, 2020

These Dividing Wall by Fran Cooper, is a lovely little book set in Paris. precisely on the Left Bank in a little known quarter of the city. Number thirty-seven sits at the meeting of two streets ...behind its grand turquoise door there is a courtyard and within its walls it’s residents carry......more

Goodreads review by O* on May 28, 2017

I received an uncorrected proof copy in exchange for an honest review. This book promised more than it could chew. I was disappointed, and agree with a previous reviewer who wrote "it lacks a plot". To me it feels like the author has attempted to write a feelgood-novel mixed with a little preaching o......more


Quotes

An engaging debut that throws light on a hidden side of Paris. Woman & Home

Confident and brilliant

This book played into my acute nosiness, throwing open the doors to the fictional lives of the residents of number 37 . . . It'll open your heart and your mind. It certainly did mine. The Pool

A multi-layered novel, elevated by fine writing, in which our traditional view of Paris is debunked to show a less familiar side of the city. Cooper's expertly realised characters, both sympathetic and not, have stories that are interwoven with aplomb. Daily Mail

Cooper has written a Ship of Fools for today, bringing forth the poetry and pathos of ordinary lives. The Lady

The Paris of this skillful yet tender debut novel is not the Paris of our Eurostar mini breaks. Red Online

Cooper's characters are what make this novel so readable. The Herald

The writing tantalizingly evokes the sights and sounds of Paris while also giving us an eye-opening perspective of a side of the city that we don't know much about. It is a nuanced portrayal of relationships and the whole spectrum of human emotions. Book Riot

This beautifully written debut is about love and loss. Prima

Timely and thoughtful, it's perhaps one of the first novels to reflect back the state of our current society. The Idle Woman blog