In Paris in 1815, everything is changing. Napoleon is in exile, on his way to Saint Helena. France has a king again, and in Paris new streets are being laid, old buildings torn down. The freedoms, or illusions of freedom, of the Revolution are disappearing: Paris is no longer the place where any idea can be expressed. And Daniel Connor, a medical student who does anatomical drawings, is there to see it all: he’s come from Edinburgh to study with Georges Cuvier at the Jardin des Plantes. At the start of his trip, though, a woman charms him then steals his luggage, which contains gifts for Cuvier, a manuscript, and a letter of recommendation. Not surprisingly, Daniel has to change his plans, and also not surprisingly, his perceptions of himself and the world change as he stays in Paris and finds out more about both the city and the beautiful thief.
This book’s got so much in it that’s satisfying: intrigue and romance and intelligence, Napoleon’s exile (short sections about his trip to Saint Helena are interspersed with Daniel’s story), Lamarck and Cuvier and theories of “transformism” vs. the fixed hierarchy of species, the prehistoric past. (The woman on the mail coach, before taking Daniel’s bag, tells him how “the entire Paris basin […] was under water thousands of years ago,” how “Paris was just a hollow in the seafloor,” how what is now a city was once home only to oysters and coral and fish (p 7).) Perhaps most pleasing, to me, was all the description, concrete and exquisite: the streets and markets and quais of Paris, the alleys and ateliers, quail baked with ginger, branching coral, old bones, museum displays, mint tea, the light and the heat and the rain and the cats and the pigeons.
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