'People talk about love at first sight, about the way that men and women fall for each other immediately, but there is also such a thing as friendship at first sight .' In Paris, two couples form an intimacy that will change their lives forever. As they discover the clubs and cafes of the eleventh arrondissement, the four become inseparable, united by deeply held convictions about dating strategies, tunnelling in P.O.W. films and, crucially, the role of the Styrofoam cup in American thrillers. Experiencing the exhilarating highs of Ecstasy and sex, they reach a peak of rapture - the come-down from which is unexpected and devastating. In his latest novel Dyer fixes a dream of happiness - and its aftermath - with photographic precision. Erotic and elegaic, funny and romantic, PARIS TRANCE confirms Dyer as one of Britain's most original and talented writers.
Paris Trance: A Romance
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'A TENDER IS THE NIGHT for the Ecstasy Age' -- Tim Pears
'A beautiful, remarkable book' -- GUARDIAN
'A beautifully composed rave generation rhapsody ... dripping with eroticism' -- SUNDAY TIMES
'Compelling ... Dyer is a deft storyteller and has written a rattling good tale' -- SPECTATOR
*'A skilfully crafted map of the human heart' -- INDEPENDENT
'A beautiful, remarkable book' -- GUARDIAN
'A beautifully composed rave generation rhapsody ... dripping with eroticism' -- SUNDAY TIMES
'Compelling ... Dyer is a deft storyteller and has written a rattling good tale' -- SPECTATOR
*'A skilfully crafted map of the human heart' -- INDEPENDENT
About the Author
Geoff Dyer is the author of three novels, a critical study of John Berger, WAYS OF TELLING, and three genre- defying titles: BUT BEAUTIFUL, THE MISSING OF THE SOMME and OUT OF SHEER RAGE.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Geoff Dyer has the extraordinary ability to write about real people, doing what people actually do, and saying the kind of things people actually say in real life, all in a prose which is almost frightening in its beauty and intensity. He also manages to write about happiness convincingly, a happiness which is all the sharper and more keenly felt because we know, early on, that things will turn out unhappily for one of the male characters. The book has acknowledged echoes of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, but the picture of Paris it paints is far more realistic than either (I live there) and shows the city, and its inhabitants, pretty much as they are in real life. Either Dyer has an adviser on colloquial Parisian speech, or he's totally fluent - the French really do speak like that. A beautiful, sad, happy novel that everyone should read but very few could write.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
'Paris Trance' traces the lives of two newly formed couples in Paris, thrown together by a volatile, and at times uncertain, bond of friendship, love, lust, sex, and drugs, and their adventures and relationships both inside and around Paris. 'Paris Trance' is skilfully executed throughout, capturing everything from the frustration (both emotional and sexual) of a single man in the heat of a Parisian summer, to the attempts of Dyer's narrator to make sense of the flourishing and later degenerating relationships and personalities around him.
Dyer crafts 'Paris Trance' at his own idiosyncratic (and now his trademark) intersection of genres, not least in his fascination with the ability of prose to convey the visual, as with film and photography, while always remaining sensitive to the emotional climate of the world that he creates. Dyer is also clearly the inheritor of the spirit, if not the style, of earlier twentieth century works of fiction such as Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', and F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Tender is the Night', with his concern for the degeneration of social relationships and the perils of admiration which approaches hero worship. It is the skill with which Dyer executes his exploration into the nature of highly restricted social circles, bordering on philosophy and social psychology, which makes 'Paris Trance' a magnificent, and thoroughly engaging, work of late Twentieth Century fiction.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Bob Ventos
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a story about two couples in their twenties in Paris enjoying life and having fun. One of the characters, Luke, turns away from life and love for no clear reason and the thrust of the narrative is another character's attempts to understand why he's done this. Since we know it's all going to end in tears, the happy times become all the more poignant. It's very well written and definitely far classier and more thoughtful than your average "we went out clubbing and took loads of drugs" yoof novel.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
When you first start to read this book you feel you are being taken into a world which is totally directed towards the ultimate pinanacle of happiness. Luke's unpredictability against the calmer nature of Alex create an underlying tension of just how dominant the destructive side of our personality can be. Their relationships with Nicole and Sara create a dimension of erotic fulfillment whilst exploring basic emotional desires. The poetic way in which this book is written is totally absorbing to the extent that you feel exhausted when you finally put the book down. This book will not be to everybody's taste, but if you have ever considered what uncomplicated and definitive happiness might be like, Paris Trance goes a long way to providing an answer.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
picked this book in the local library after i forgot my halfway read copy of "yoga for people..." on the train, out of sheer desperation for this guy's style. never thought i'd find the same power in his writing in this older book, turned out to be even better, the realism presented in crude yet romantic and soft prose is just too much to miss, his style in favor of the story which is quite gripping itself as it turns out. definetely worth every penny.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
An elegant and mesmerising novel - really, adjectives don't do it justice! Geoff Dyer evokes a happiness so intense it can't last - and knowing that it doesn't somehow makes the story all the sweeter. Buy this, devour it, and read The Colour of Memory as well - your world will be a better place.
By clemi
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
For an author of Geoff Dyer's reputation this is pretty poor stuff.
It does get better if you can be bothered to persist, but I really had to
struggle through boredom and his sub-standard writing to get to the
second half of the book. At the end I was not satisfied that this was a
value experience in terms of my time or money!
It does get better if you can be bothered to persist, but I really had to
struggle through boredom and his sub-standard writing to get to the
second half of the book. At the end I was not satisfied that this was a
value experience in terms of my time or money!
By C. Grainger
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'd been recommended Geoff Dyer by a friend,and this was the first book I'd read by him and was disappointed. I felt that the story didn't really go anywhere, the drug taking and romances were just like going out clubbing in the eighties and nineties.
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2.6 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
"We all want to believe that truth is incompatible with bitterness"
A story of two love affairs in a benevolent la France, and yes - sex, drugs and rock and roll. Given that it's delivered by the sublime Geoff Dyer, what more could one ask? Read more
Published on 10 Oct 2010 by Eileen Shaw
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ceaselessly into the Past: F. Scott, Intimacy and Ecstasy
Paris Trance is both a novel and an elegy about romance, destiny, intimacy, and the rise and fall of an intense, short-lived friendship between two couples living an expatriate... Read more
Published on 17 July 2000 by Eric J. Steger
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy this book!
Beautiful prose from one of England's best writer
Published on 7 Dec 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
Emotional, erotic, amusing, insightful...simple but eloquent
Excellent book. So hard to find a good book about friendship, love and loss. This is one of them.
Published on 7 July 1999
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