Thank you Netgalley and RB Media for this advance listener copy in exchange for my honest review.

DNF at 25%. I didn't like it at all. I didn't feel like it was going anywhere. It wasn't plot driven, nor character based. It seemed to rely a lot on really detailed descriptions of everything that surrounds the narrator. Too much detail on his translations of a physics book. I don't know if it was meant to be metaphorical, but it didn't work for me. The prose was too flowery and over-descriptive. It's just too poetic for me. There will be people who like this kind of writing, but it wasn't what I enjoyed. I enjoy a plot driven or character based story.

I didn't like the audiobook narrator either. I couldn't understand him very well with his really thick accent. It seemed like it was supposed to accentuate the fact that the main character had been raised in a Dutch household, but it was just too heavy of an accent for me to follow.

I will not be reviewing on Goodreads as I did not finished the book.

I thought this was an ebook sorry guys! Cant give a review to this one because I didnt read it.


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Three losely connected time periods make up this strange little novel. Three losely connected time periods that felt distinct, but not terribly purposeful. Kim's writing style feels solid, but I didn't feel like this one held a lot of meat for me. There were moments I caught a glimpse of something more, but Kim didn't quite follow through.

Was I disappointed? Yes. Would I still read another by Kim? Yes.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was interesting and boring at the same time. What I mean by that is, one forth of this book was very interesting and it had me hooked but then the rest of it was just boring and pointless. Although the prose was interesting and the atmosphere was exquisite there wasn't a concrete plot.

I just reviewed Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim. #ParisisaPartyParisisaGhost #NetGalley I was given an advance copy for a fair and honest review of the book. I was looking forward to reading this book based on the book description and title. However I ended up disappointed overall. The first section was very well written and much as I had envisioned it would be. Main character, Henrik, tells us upfront he is Japanese, born in Japan, but raised in Denmark with his adoptive parents. Henrik and his parents have decided it would be desirable if Henrik lived in Paris to learn to translate technical information into technical journals. His new friends assume he is stereotypical Japanese and are surprised to learn he has been raised Danish. He has a girlfriend that lives across the hall he is used to her moods, she likes to work and not be disturbed he’s has learned to make her meals and leave them outside her door. She will eat, wash her plate, and respond to any notes he might leave. So when he leaves a meal and notes for which she doesn’t respond after a day Henrik doesn’t worry as it isn’t unusual then after a few days he becomes concerned but doesn’t call anyone. For fear they will think he harmed his girlfriend. He lets days turn into a week then weeks pass before authorities are alerted that she is non responsive.. I don’t remember much being made of the fact it had been so long. She did not only have the meal Henrik had made but she had cheese and sausages in her refrigerator that has petrified because it is so old. Henrik had become quite successful at translating and has received an internship to translate for Sanofi. I found the successive csections didn’t seem to follow that well. I didn’t care for the relationship Henrik had developed with his best friend’s daughter.. I became uncomfortable with their relationship. However it did seem quite platonic it just didn’t feel right to me he was too interested. I don’t feel I can recommend the book as is , I would enjoy it more if the first part was delved into more. Why didn’t he really evercall someone to do a check on her even her family didn’t come bang her door down, really? I just reviewed Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim. #ParisisaPartyParisisaGhost #NetGalley

𝙍𝙀𝙑𝙄𝙀𝙒

PARIS IS A PARTY, PARIS IS A GHOST
Author: David Hoon Kim
Narrator: Joji Otani-Hansen
⭐⭐

#gifted by @netgalley in exchange for an honest review
pub date: 3 August 2021

⚠️ TW: suicide


𝙎𝙔𝙉𝙊𝙋𝙎𝙄𝙎:
"When Fumiko emerges after one month locked in her dorm room, she’s already dead, leaving a half-smoked Marlboro Light and a cupboard of petrified food in her wake. For her boyfriend, Henrik Blatand, an aspiring translator, these remnants are like clues, propelling him forward in a search for meaning. Meanwhile, Fumiko, or perhaps her doppelgänger, reappears: in line at the Louvre, on street corners and subway platforms, and on the dissection table of a group of medical students.

Henrik’s inquiry expands beyond Fumiko’s seclusion and death, across the absurd, entropic streets of Paris and the figures that wander them (...)"


𝙈𝙔 𝙊𝙋𝙄𝙉𝙄𝙊𝙉:
As soon as I saw the title and cover of this book (which are stunningly captivating) I immediately hit that" request" button on NetGalley. I was curious and expectant.

Unfortunately my expectations were not met. I loved the first few chapters, they were brilliantly written and had some twists that kept me on the edge of my seat, eagerly awaiting more. The first third of the book was amazing but from there on I liked it less and less...

Maybe it's this audiobook slump I've been trying to shake off, maybe it's my rusty, very basic French that made it hard to understand the narrator's accent or maybe it's just my general lack of concentration that keeps me from properly focusing on literally anything, but I felt like I kept zoning out and missing out on parts of the story, if they were there at all. The chapters were also very long, and from a certain point on I had no idea what was happening in the story.

PARIS IS A PARTY, PARIS IS A GHOST is a book that at first sight seemed like just what I was looking for but it simply didn't deliver all that I was hoping for. However, I still found some of it enjoyable and I absolutely want to revisit this book in a different format, reread it and hopefully change my rating to a better one.

#ParisisaPartyParisisaGhost #NetGalley #bookreview

I really wanted to like this book because, like the main character Henrik, I am a translator and speak Danish and French. I was also intrigued after reading an excerpt of the part where he talks about meeting other Asian adoptees in Denmark. Unfortunately, the book as a whole really did not impress me. It mostly just follows Henrik through Paris as he makes various (occasionally interesting) observations and obsesses over various women and girls. There was no plot, or even any general point being made. The three sections of the novel feel disjointed. Henrik does not develop as a person, and all the side characters are one-dimensional. The one part I liked was the section written in the second person about a female medical student, and I kept hoping we would return to her but we never did. Overall, this book was disappointing and pointless. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me access to the audiobook in exchange for my honest review!

4 stars

beautiful writing, atmospheric, intriguing

I am grateful to RB Media Recorded Books for sending me a copy of this audiobook for review.

This is such an interesting book. The three stories in here are very different, but the atmosphere was maintained throughout. I think this comes from the writing style. The stories felt mysterious and disjointed, but this is a perfect match for the content. The stories are not plot driven or particularly filled with character work, but rather it is a swirling journey through the mind of a character who seems to be permanently on the edge of an internal crisis.

This is a story about being displaced and searching for connection. Each story is rich with a sense of longing, and a creeping desperation as we experience the perspective of our main character. Henrik is ethnically Japanese but was raised by his Danish adopted parents, and he studies translation. These factors add to the sense of displacement and of him simply existing in an "in-between' state. This also extends to the other characters all feel very hazy and mysterious, and Henrik struggles to define them as he also searches for his identity.

I do find that the beginning story was the strongest of the three, but I enjoyed the book as a whole. I would recommend to readers of literary fiction and also for fans of authors like Murakami.

I am going to have to read this one myself. I’m sorry, but I can’t handle this narrator. The story is good so far and I don’t want to finish the book, but I can’t do this audiobook at all

I had expected something unique from the book Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim. But I was disappoited. The book had a nice concept but fell short in delivery. The narration by Joji Otani-Hansen was not satisfactory alsio.
I won't recommend this audiobook. Reading a physical copy would be better if anyone is interested in reading it.

First, a disclaimer: I received this audiobook in advance of publication in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own opinions. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this book.

There are parts that I love about each of the three sections, but as a whole this book is disjointed. I am not entirely certain that I understood the story. I read this on audio and there is a chance that I might have understood it better in print, but to me, this read like a collection of three novellas (some of which I liked better than others, but all of which had strong points).

Lovely prose here, but this novel in three parts suffers from being disjointed. The narration does not help the confusing transitions and didn’t add anything for me in this one.

2 ½ stars

While I can recognise that Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost is far from a terrible novel, I don’t have a lot of positive things to say about it. Personally, I don’t think the world needed yet another novel about a modern-day (wannabe) flâneur (who happens to be, you guessed it, an intellectual cis straight man whose personality is akin to a slice of soggy toast) having a metaphysical existential crisis in Paris (where of course he falls for an elusive woman).

This is the kind of novel that cares little about the plot or characters. Instead, the narrative seems very much intent on being incohesive, presenting us with scenes and or reflections that blur the line between reality and dreams. While I usually quite like novels that manage to create and sustain a surrealist mood, here, from the very get-go, I found the narrative, its structure in particular, to be little other than artificial.
This novel seems to be desperately striving for this peculiar absurdist tone but, in the case of this reader at least, it just fell flat. Sacrificing style over substance also results in a cast of barely sketched out characters, figments really, that do not manage to hold one’s attention. The weakest aspect of the novel lies in Henrik, our main narrator and major character. His voice was très insipid, to the point that I would often have to make an effort to follow his train of thoughts. His seemingly interminable inner monologues were dull indeed. He often recounts the exchanges that he has with others so that I felt all the more distanced from the story's events. The guy also behaved in a rather inconsistent way so that I sometimes had the impression that the story was being told by numerous narrators, instead of the one guy.

In the first section, we learn a little about Henrik, a Japanese adoptee to Danish parents. He’s completing some sort of thesis or dissertation on Samuel Beckett while living in Paris. He speaks three languages, Danish, English, and French and is an aspiring translator who wants to do English/French translations (not an easy endeavour given that neither language is technically his ‘mother tongue’, which is danish). He’s dating Fumiko, a Japanese woman who for reasons unknown to him (let alone us) has locked herself in her dorm room. We never meet Fumiko, as after days of confinement she commits suicide.
We then switch to a ‘you’ type of narrative where we are introduced to a group of young medical students who are dissecting (i think?) Fumiko’s body. What purpose did this part have? Go figure.
Then back to Henrik and his seemingly unending monologues. He tells us about the random people he sees on the street, and about trailing Asian women who remind him of Fumiko, of meeting and talking to other people (i cannot recall who they were or how they met, that’s how memorable these encounters/friendships were). I had no idea how much time was passing, days, weeks, years? There was no clear passage of time, so I was unsure how long ago Fumiko had committed suicide or how old our mc was. He gives us very little insight into his relationship with Fumiko and because of this lack of information I had a hard time 1) believing in Fumiko (especially since we never really see her 'alive' in the present and 2) believing in their dalliance.

Occasionally he does come up with interesting observations regarding Paris, the ‘intellectual’ circles Henrik moves in, and on his identity. Attention is paid in particular to the disconnect he feels between who he is (he feels very danish) and his appearance (which is not ‘typically’ danish). But these speculations (on identity & belonging, the divide between one's inner and one's outer self) were drowned out by Henrik’s other thoughts, which often made little sense or struck me as entirely too affected.

Then, all of a sudden, the last section of the narrative goes on about his relationship with his goddaughter. This seemed very out of the blue and has little to do with what had come beforehand. This goddaughter did not sound like a genuine child and her dad was way OTT (at one point he shits in a plastic bag...why? couldn’t he have asked to use his neighbours' toilet if his own toilet was broken or whatnot?). Here there is a bit of pretending to be what you are not, as in this case, Henrik often acts like his goddaughter’s father.
Nothing truly interesting or new is said on the subject. The story then briefly moves from Paris to Rome and here Henrik seems all of a sudden to remember about Fumiko.

The novel tried very hard to impress its intelligence and artistry on us. I don’t mind erudite asides or creative ramblings but only if they either serve some sort of purpose (in relation to characters or plot) or if they serve as springboards for more interesting discussions/conversations. Here, it seemed they were just trying to create a certain atmosphere. The novel as a whole struck me as being very much influenced by the New Wave. And while it was in a way experimental and clearly postmodernist, it lacked bite, flavour. It was all flash, no substance. At least Beckett is amusing! Here the weirdness was studied, worst still, where was the humor?

Maybe a more engaging or intriguing narrator would have made me more inclined to pay attention to what was going on (then again, was anything really going on?) or what the author was writing about...but Henrik was painfully bland. His voice put me to sleep.

I recommend you check out more positive reviews before you decide whether to give this one a shot or not.