Pegasus Books, 2021
The second instalment of Tessa Lunney’s fabulous Kiki Button series, Autumn Leaves, 1922 sees Kiki back in Paris after an extended stay in Australia due to the unexpected death of her mother. Kiki spends her time in Sydney reading her mother’s old diaries, slowly trying to piece together this woman she had hardly known – her mother, Cordelia King. But the final diary is missing, along with crucial details about Cordelia’s life in Paris and her lover. And so Kiki returns to Paris, just in time for the autumn leaves to be falling and the chilly wind beginning to blow through the streets of Montpartnasse.
But post-war Paris isn’t always the bohemian dream. Between her old wartime surgeon and spymaster Dr Fox still watching her every move and discovering more and more incongruous details about who her mother had been, Kiki’s life in Montparnasse is anything but restful. Roped into another mission for Fox, Kiki finds herself once against mixing with everyone from exiled Russian princes to political extremists, equipped with little more than her wits and a packet of cigarettes.
The plot is detailed, with multiple storylines and mysteries running parallel; one is the largescale mobilising of political extremes in Europe in the post-war period and Kiki’s role in keeping certain royal figures away from the upheaval. Her work for Fox is fuelled primarily by a desire to clear the name of her childhood friend Tom, who has been accused of treason during the war, which acts as an additional mystery to solve. All while Kiki is also attempting to piece together her mother’s life in the aftermath of her death.
At times, the strands of the plot felt a tiny bit tangled but, in the end, this seemed to provide the reader with an ingeniously accurate sense of Kiki’s confusion and—undoubtedly—the public confusion of living in Europe in the early 1920s, post-war and post-pandemic.
It is worth mentioning that the Spanish flu is referred to a couple of times, which was a great relief to read in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, since the 1918 influenza pandemic is often forgotten in stories set in the early 20s, overshadowed by the First and Second World Wars.
A few recognisable figures appear and float in an enjoyably lifelike manner through the story. From Ernest Hemingway and Henri Matisse, through to Coco Chanel and Gertrude Stein, Kiki’s “day job” as a gossip columnist sees her well connected enough to be invited to parties, soirées and afternoon tea with all manner of colourful Parisian characters.
Tessa Lunney’s prose is beautifully lyrical and descriptive without being laborious or clichéd. Her portraits of Paris are luscious and lifelike; simultaneously gritty and glamorous, they consistently appeal to all the senses so that a reader not only feels Paris, but smells it, hears it, and sees it from Kiki’s top floor window.
A truly enjoyable novel, Autumn Leaves, 1922 is exquisitely researched, carefully written, and thoroughly entertaining.
