I Never Saw Paris by Harry I. Freund

Harry Freund’s sophomore novel, I Never Saw Paris: A Novel of the Afterlife, wades into the existential quandary of what happens after death, taking into consideration everything that comprises who we are before that final launch. It’s an easy read, but is as predictable as Willy Wonka’s scratch and sniff wallpaper in pitch and tone. With humor and candor, Freund explores a perceived reality that many believe awaits us, and merges it with the human need for inquiry and verification. Divided into four corresponding parts — ‘Shock’, ‘Lives’, ‘Angels’, ‘Conclusion’ — the novel progresses linearly and confronts real life issues in layers that are accessible to the layperson.

To placate his wife, the narrator, Mr. Irving Q. Caldman, is on his way to purchase some blue shirts for their trip to Paris because she thinks they bring out the color of his eyes. On the corner of Fifty-Seventh and Park Avenue in Manhattan, along with three strangers, a man who has fallen asleep at the wheel runs them all down.

Amorphous and confused, the strangers are met by Malakh, an angel assigned to help them confront and atone for their earthly sins in order to move along to the ultimate judgment by the High Court, which will decide whether or not they enter into heaven.

Freund depicts the fallibility of human nature in almost home-movie like quality, creating a patchwork of scenes from characters’ lives, highlighting both quirks and shame for the bodiless. One core stylistic choice that was tired was the entirely archetypal character profiles. Whether for the sake of believability, or a need to coerce readers to care about that which they already know and expect, it detracted thematically from the story for this reader. There is the prominent businessman who balanced finances, work, and his cadre of mistresses (despite three decades of marriage); a choleric elderly Jewish man who was the only one of his family to survive Auschwitz; the spry, attractive, though depressed middle-age personal shopper who cannot get enough alligator handbags and shoes; the homosexual late twenty-something interior decorator, who left his native Midwest for something better; and the tenacious elderly black grandmother from South Carolina whose belief in the Lord helps bring them full circle. Freund could have deviated — if only slightly — from such a boiler plate premise. It seemed that in this novel what the characters carried was the weight of who they were in their lives before the accident.

Sprinkled throughout the novel are the requisite shame, eccentricity, and indulgent sin. The sometimes gross, ugly aspects of our humanity that are more easily filed or forgotten are issues with which we may be forever intrigued, and Freund makes these tactile through sharing flashes from each character’s life. He leads readers to a plateau of understanding through inciting the empathy that is arguably innate, that manifests when we’ve seen each other at our most naked and vulnerable.

Definitely not a novel (strictly) about Judeo-Christian loyalty, Freund posits a bigger issue, and creates a venue for discussion and exploration. Opening a dialogue for degrees of belief and faith are important, especially in these times, and Freund has achieved it in quite a benign way. Visitations by multiple angels neither nudge the group into piety nor quell the guilt that sin inevitably implants, and the clean package he delivers may help some readers be more at ease. Through their interactions with one another, the characters absorb other than that which they know, which, in death, and ultimately, enlightenment, makes them whole.