Paris Twilight

June 3, 2013
Rymer is a writer of long-form nonfiction and his first novel has good bones; there’s plenty of mystery and tension to carry a reader through some overwritten passages. After a professional disgrace, prominent anesthesiologist Matilde Anselm comes to 1990 Paris as part of a surgical team that will perform a heart transplant on an unknown patient as soon as a donor heart becomes available. Suspecting that the heart will be obtained unethically, she begins a dialogue with Emil Sahran, a powerful diplomat coordinating the operation, and a romance quickly develops between the two. Meanwhile, Matilde learns that a stranger, Frenchman Byron Saxe, has inexplicably left his modest estate to her. Exploring his tiny apartment during her days spent waiting for a heart, she meets a young woman, Corie, who lives next door. Corie is a pianist, translator, and activist protesting the first Gulf War, and the two develop a shared fascination with a series of letters Byron had hired Corie to translate, written by a woman named Alba in the ’30s to her lover during the Spanish Civil War, which prove to be connected to Matilde’s own past. Early on, Matilde is offputtingly long-winded and the relationship with Sahran feels forced, but as the plot gathers momentum, its discoveries have real emotional pull. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency.

May 15, 2013
An American doctor in Paris is confronted by a slew of mysteries in this slow-moving debut. Matilde Anselm has had a brilliant professional life and a dismal love life. After her sweetheart died in Vietnam, she became convinced she brought lovers bad luck and stayed resolutely single. Yet, at 50, she is a top cardiac anesthesiologist, in Paris to work on a heart transplant with an old colleague, the surgeon Willem Madsen. Who is the patient? Willem is as unforthcoming as Emil Sahran, the medical troubleshooter behind the assignment; Emil is a third-generation Parisian of Tunisian descent. A greater mystery looms. A French lawyer tells her the recently deceased Byron Saxe has left her his apartment. A mistake, surely; Matilde has never heard of Saxe, but she settles into the tiny space and discovers a concealed door leading to a seemingly deserted but magnificent suite. Next, the manager of a local restaurant hands Matilde an envelope addressed to Saxe, the first of many. While the streets of Paris are awash in demonstrations (it's 1990, and an invasion of Iraq is imminent), Matilde becomes immersed in letters dating back 50 years. They describe a romantic love undone by the Spanish Civil War. Carlos, in Paris, is unable to help his young wife, Alba, and their baby, captured by Franco's forces. What has all this to do with Matilde? Clue: She's a foundling. It emerges the letters are being translated by a young American woman, sole inhabitant of the suite and a leading anti-war protester. Rymer expends so much energy assembling and disassembling these puzzles that he has none left over to nail the authenticity of Matilde and Emil or their sudden transformation into lovers. The end is a melodramatic swirl, juxtaposing the eventual surgery and the drama on the streets. Rymer has drastically overextended himself. For a novel that covers, seamlessly, street demonstrations, surgery and much else besides, see Ian McEwan's Saturday.

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