These Dividing Walls

'A sensitive, necessary, brave book.' Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us

What building doesn't have secrets?

How much does anyone know of what goes on behind their neighbour's doors?

On a hot June day, grief-stricken Edward arrives in Paris hoping that a stay in a friend's empty apartment will help him mend. But this is not the Paris he knows: there are no landmarks or grand boulevards, and the apartment he was promised is little more than an attic room.

In the apartments below him, his new neighbours fill their flats with secrets. A young mother is on the brink, a bookshop owner buries her past, and a banker takes up a dark and malicious new calling.

Before he knows it, Edward will find himself entangled in their web, and as the summer heat intensifies so do tensions within and without the building, leading to a city-wide wave of violence, and a reckoning within the walls of number 37.

'It'll open your heart and mind.' The Pool

“An engaging debut that throws light on a hidden side of Paris.”

- Woman & Home

Confident and brilliant - Lisa O'Donnell

This book played into my acute nosiness, throwing open the doors to the fictional lives of the residents of number 37 . . . It'll open your heart and your mind. It certainly did mine. - The Pool

Soulful - Good Housekeeping

Tender - Red Magazine

With the precision of a painter, Fran Cooper paints an unforgettable and unexpected portrait of Paris - Hannah Rothschild

This beautifully written debut is about love and loss - Prima

Fran Cooper grew up in London before reading English at Cambridge and Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She spent three years in Paris writing a PhD about travelling eighteenth-century artists, and currently works in the curatorial department of a London museum. These Dividing Walls is her first novel.

'A sensitive, necessary, brave book.' Laura Barnett , author of The Versions of Us What building doesn't have secrets? How much does anyone know of what goes on behind their neighbour's doors?On a hot June day, grief-stricken Edward arrives in Paris hoping that a stay in a friend's empty apartment will help him mend. But this is not the Paris he knows: there are no landmarks or grand boulevards, and the apartment he was promised is little more than an attic room. In the apartments below him, his new neighbours fill their flats with secrets. A young mother is on the brink, a bookshop owner buries her past, and a banker takes up a dark and malicious new calling. Before he knows it, Edward will find himself entangled in their web, and as the summer heat intensifies so do tensions within and without the building, leading to a city-wide wave of violence, and a reckoning within the walls of number 37.'It'll open your heart and mind.' The Pool

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