The Radiant City

In Paris, the so-called radiant city, Matthew Bowles, freelance

journalist, suffers a dark time. Holed up in a bare apartment in the 8th

arrondissement, he’s recuperating physically, though not emotionally,

from injuries sustained in a shooting in Hebron. His memory of the event

is murky, and although the media has deemed him a hero – he may or may

not have tried to save a man and his child – Matthew is repulsed by the

attention. Unable to work, Matthew reluctantly agrees to write a book

“about what got you shot” for which a New York literary agent promises

“six figures on spec.” This is the project he tries to get on with in

those times when he’s free from depression, free from the panic attacks

triggered by certain sounds or crowd situations. More often than not,

Matthew is mired in the memories of other war zones – Beirut,

Herzegovina, Rwanda, Iraq – where he has worked as a war correspondent.

There’s a “sack of skulls” he carries around with him. Surfacing, as

well, are memories of his rural Nova Scotia childhood: a barn on fire,

horses trapped. Recollections of his mother – a woman who held on until

Matthew got away from home – explain, perhaps, Matthew’s tender regard

for Sadia Ferhat, a Lebanese woman who, with her father and brother,

runs a restaurant in Matthew’s district. Doing what he can to save

Sadia’s son, who is teetering on a life of drugs and crime, Matthew’s

life intersects in surprising ways with former colleague Jack Sadler,

photo-journalist and ex-mercenary, now living in Paris and also

recovering from war trauma. Jack’s presence in Paris is, at first, a

comfort. Tough, burly, and resilient, Jack knows how to deal with panic:

“‘there’s part of the brain that always lives in the present tense of

the trauma .... doesn’t realize that whatever shit happened to you isn’t

still happening .... convince your lizard brain that time’s moved on.’”

The intersection of these three lives is Davis’s story in The Radiant

City, a novel that, like Dante’s Inferno, spirals downward. The Paris

underground – literally and metaphorically – teems with betrayal. The

authorial compassion of this book is, however, radiant.