In a city of millions, if someone wants to disappear, they can

With the title, Paris by the Book and the cover of a pretty Parisian street with blossoming trees and a floating red balloon, I felt I was in for a classic romance. But Liam Callanan is too clever for that.

This is a story, set partly in Paris and partly in Milwaukee, the latter, totally foreign to this Australian reader. It is a grittily real story of the mess a marriage becomes after twenty years or so when the reality of bringing up children, fulfilling dreams and earning a living all becomes too much.

Leah, the narrator has always dreamed of Paris and making a film. When she steals a copy of The Red Balloon and is chased by the bookseller Robert Eady, a young writer, their story begins.

This is a book about stories and films and the way our lives do not follow scripts. Except in this story they do. There is an intriguing conceit of life following art, or art following life.

This is not just a story, but one of those books that has the reader pausing and reflecting.

Leah and Robert have two daughters. Leah has put her dreams on hold and works as a speechwriter. Robert works at a university and tries to keep his career as a writer going. Then one day he disappears.

Without a trace. But he does leave behind tickets to Paris in a cereal box. Struggling to know whether Robert is alive or dead and how to live, Leah and her daughters go to Paris, convinced Robert is there.

They see him on the periphery, or do they? Leah constantly struggles with determining what is real.

Robert has won prize money for a literary competition, written when? Before or after his disappearance? So the family stays in Paris, Leah owning a bookshop, with an eccentric classification system by geography, and the girls attending school. Their lives are consumed by the missing father. Leah does not know if she is a widow, the girls miss their father and continually look for him.

The resolution of the mystery of Robert’s disappearance a is cleverly done. I will say no more.

This is an absorbing book because it writes so truthfully of human relationships throughout a lifespan.

It is also absorbing because of its insights into two French classics, the film The Red Balloon and the Madeline books. The book is a treasure of literary reference and of writers in Paris.

Paris is beautifully realised; its everyday life and streets, its parks, gardens, Metro and tourist attractions. A reader would not be disappointed in this vision of Paris, as it does not gloss over the poorer arrondissements.

Leah and her daughters are vivid characters supplemented by a host of minor characters, who are important to the development of the story and the character.

This is an unusual book that I can thoroughly recommend. Paris by the Book, by Liam Callanan is published by HQ Fiction and is available in printed and digital editions – click here for details.