Six Days

This novel's six-day narrative, set in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the winter of 2012, expands into lifetimes, histories, as interconnecting stories are woven together: stories of abandonment and fractured families, rape and coercion, addiction, ambition, loss and grief, all told in moments.

Susan's Review

Contemporary Paris: think magnificent architecture, glorious art, haute cuisine and glamorous fashion. West Australian writer Amanda Curtin’s new novel, Six Days, offers a radically different, decidedly unromantic view of the City of Love. It’s a city rife with poverty, homelessness and addiction; and one which despite its long history of the struggle for social justice, has become a site of disillusionment and alienation. But lest this sound unremittingly grim, Six Days is also imbued with compassion and the need for a sense of community. It asks us to understand rather than judge the destitute and degraded who are typically invisible to eyes like mine: those of middle-class privileged tourists who regularly visit one of the world’s most physically and culturally attractive destinations.

As its title suggests, Six Days is set over the course of six days: from 7th to 12th February 2012, in a blisteringly cold winter. It traces the life of its central character, Daniel Despard, an expat Australian who’s lived in Paris for over four decades. Once the co-owner of a successful wine company, as well as a contented husband and father, Daniel is now a recovering alcoholic working as the concierge of an apartment complex in the Latin Quarter; divorced; and estranged from his beloved daughter Flori. He is the novel’s “eye” through which we see the bleak social and economic realities of Paris: realities which Curtin brings to life through the use of brilliantly evocative prose.  But Daniel is also the voice of conscience. When against his best interests, he chooses to help an unnamed young street beggar, he sets in motion a train of events that confronts us with the big moral question: what can we, as individuals, do to help create a kinder, more egalitarian, less exploitative society? And while Daniel’s narrative doesn’t provide answers – Curtin is, after all, a novelist, not a politician, economist or philosopher – the very posing of the question in an age of widespread cynicism and rising authoritarianism is surely an admirable act of writerly integrity. 

Daniel’s personal narrative is also placed in the context of France’s wider history. His story is interpellated with sections dealing with events during World War Two Paris and its aftermath; the 1968 student and worker protests against capitalist structures; and the more recent history of the anti-fascist independent movement in Catalonia. The narrative cleverly requires us to make connections, literally and thematically, between past characters and events and Daniel’s present.  In effect, it constructs a detective story about France’s traumatic history that echoes the novel’s central mystery: what happened to Marcelline, Daniel’s tenant and friend whose unstinting love and practical support helped him recover a sense of resilience and dignity.

Amanda Curtin is one of Australia’s great stylists, and this beautifully written novel, with its cast of fascinating characters, vivid sense of place and ambitious scope, is a timely reminder of the value of art. How it can unsettle our complacency, affirm the value of compassion and friendship, and remind us that language is both a weapon of oppression and a form of moral and political resistance. All this while revealing its vision of life gradually, subtly, instead of telling us what to think. Six Days is Curtin’s third novel; and while I’m also a big fan of The Sinkings and Elemental, I can’t recommend her new novel highly enough.