Customer Reviews

Failing Paris

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Samantha Dunn gives us a true vision. It is the view of a character that embodies all of our own self-doubt, risk-taking, self-destruction, re-evaluation, and eventual reformation whenever we find ourselves thrust into a situation far from our comfortable front porch. A view of a young person struggling to find the correct/moral/survivable path when faced with a personal crisis far from home...

This first novel speaks very forcefully to those of Dunn's generation, with images/questionings easily taken from their own life, resonating with their own personal trauma at being born at this particular point in history in this country that is struggling to find an artful way of living in the blur of post-TV white noise, and global culture babel.

The fact that this is a first novel, makes us glad for those to follow. Truly a contribution to the art that makes our lives worth more than the sum of our daily activities.

Read it.

A gritty taste of reality told by an author whose command of the English language is a thing of beauty. Samantha Dunn tells the story of a young woman caught in a crisis without anyone to turn to in a land that can never up to her expectations. I was compelled to turn the page and see this girl face difficult hardships, intense loneliness, and moral dilemmas that would test any resolve. I was surprised that I cared so deeply for the character of Sabine and her journey to become a woman. An amazing book written by an amazing author.

A gritty taste of reality told by an author whose command of the english language is a thing of beauty. Samantha Dunn tells the story of a young woman caught in a crisis without anyone to turn to in a land that can never measure up to her expectations. I was compelled to turn the page and see this girl face difficult hardships, intense loneliness and moral dilemmas that would test any resolve. I was surprised that I cared so deeply for the character of Sabine and her journey to become a woman. An amazing book written by an amazing writer.

Samantha Dunn is one of the most talented young writers I've encountered. The book Failing Paris is about that lovely city and its pitfalls, and so much more. What a storyteller!

Paris is usually written about in novels as romantic, luminous, but here it's grey, rainy, dangerous, claustrophobic--and thus, a revelation. On scholarship from Los Cruces, NM, Sabine is trying to fit in, to escape her lower middle class background, but can she ever really learn French so well that she *is* French? Powerful, gripping, hypnotic--and beautifully written.

This is a wonderful, if hard-edged, story of one young woman's experience in Paris. Unlike the myriad books out there painting a rosy picture of (name any European country here), this portrait is more intimate, more gritty, and much better written than most you will find in your local bookstore.

Here, the character is unsure, struggling to find herself, some friends, and her way in the world. She hides a lot from others and herself on this journey of discovery, but each scene is truthful, compelling you to go on. This is a coming of age book, with all the clouds of vacuousness gone. It's the real story of a real American girl in Paris, lumps and all. I loved this book and highly recommend it.

Apart from the "gripping" (boy is that word overused in book reviews) style, and an intense feeling of integrity, this book offers humorus/morbid insights to everyday life, through a not so regular week in the life of an american exchange student, trapped in a not so romantic paris. I found it very enjoyable.

The internal conflict of turning into an adult, becoming who we didn't think we would become, who we fought so hard not to become, trying to escape our DNA, the same idea Fitzgerald sculpted with The Other Side of Paradise, Samantha Dunn has brought to life again in Failing Paris. The tumultuous giving up of our youth and surviving on the other side is lyrically drawn in these pages. I loved this book, not just because of the finesse of the prose, but because so many times, I wanted to be there with the narrator, to give her advice, to pick her up when she fell down, to cheer her on when she had successes, when she started to see the light.

It's a read that will stay in your heart for a long time.

The story grabs you and you care about the girl thrust into an unknown place - Paris. Of course, the journey is about her. The language is dense parsing emotion with the landscape of Paris, the one week to resolve a problem. Men that come into her life in that week where nothing is simple, everything matters and the redolent sexuality wavers like the heads of the red tulips that burst through the dirt in spring. Prose woven through the tension; Ms. Dunn's debut novel was of course nominated for the Pen/West award.

Samantha Dunn has demonstrated her spectacular literary prowess in her gripping memoirs "Not By Accident" and "Faith in Carlos Gomez," and "Failing Paris" definitively shows that her skills extend to novels as well. This book broadened my appreciation of her work. I'll read anything this woman writes.