She loved Nelson Algren however – they passionately loved each other. The two of them also had a wickedly confusing personal relationship. The central conflict is that de Beauvoir had a career that was irrevocably tied to Jean-Paul Satre. The fact that the woman is Simone de Beauvoir and the man Nelson Algren and the story is based on truth, well, that just makes it a heckuva lot juicier to read. It’s a classic “she can’t have it all” story for the female protagonist (although children do not play much of a part in this). They meet through a mutual friend, embark on a torrid affair and find that while they continue to be drawn to each other with great fervor, their work is equally important and keeps them apart. When it begins, the woman lives in Paris and is visiting Chicago, the man lives there.
On one level, Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago is a novel about a long distance romance spanning 17 years that begins in 1947. Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago is a meticulously crafted and moving piece of work. The novel’s force lies in the carefully shaped sentences and beautiful because unadorned language, from the sensitivity with which Cowie, focalising his narrative in almost equal parts through his protagonists, renders the fine grain, snags, and splinters of love, its illimitable complexities, and its decline. Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago is tender without ever being mawkish. Human feeling is the basic – which is not to say easily captured – ingredient of this new novel, which works as a satisfying and coherent whole, in no small measure thanks to Cowie’s ability to balance narrative warmth with authorial cool.
like Tyler at her best, he avoids descending into sentimentalism’s familiar rhythms, resolutions, and clichés while being unafraid and unapologetic in his renderings – equally raw and incisive – of sentiment. But in between are long, anguished periods apart filled with competing desires lovers old and new, writing, politi, gambling which ultimately expose the fragility of their unconventional marriage and put their devotion to the test.Cowie writes with great economy and assurance, a commanding sense of purpose and narrative drive which in places remind one of the best moments in Anne Tyler. Their relationship intensifies during intoxicating months spent together in Paris and Chicago.
Here, a passion is sparked that will last for the next two decades. After a whirlwind tour of dive bars, cabarets and the police lockup, the pair return to his apartment on Wabansia Avenue. Chicago, 1947: on a freezing February night, France's feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir calls up radical resident novelist Nelson Algren, asking him to show her around. Sharp and intimate, Douglas Cowie's reimagining of the turbulent love affair between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren asks what it means to love and be loved by the right person at the wrong time.
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