SOURCE: “A Glorious Elegy to Youth and Paris,” in New Statesman, April 17, 1998, p. 49.

In the following review, McWilliam offers a positive assessment of Paris Trance.

Charm is a tricky quality. We like to feel it but where we identify it we often feel compelled to condemn. Charming books tend to wither as fashion moves on or as we grow older. The Catcher in the Rye, and maybe Ginger and Pickles seem to be exceptions. Then there are books, such as The Great Gatsby, whose callowness is itself profound, whose charm is persistingly, enduringly, transient.

Geoff Dyer has written such a book [Paris Trance]. His career has been satisfying to observe, progressing exponentially from his first novel, The Colour of Memory, which suffered from being part of a funky batch promotion, through non-fiction works that deployed his particular cool and retentive intelligence and sparkling bolshiness, and fiction that mined...