We're less than a month away from our trip to Paris, and while I should probably be focusing on travel suggestions and maps in preparation, instead I've been getting my feel of the city through my preferred type of research: pleasure reading! Here are a few books to enjoy whether you're making a trip to Paris or just dreaming of one.
A Paris Apartment
As a furniture specialist for Sotheby's in New York, April is sent to Paris to sort through an apartment that hasn't been entered for the last 70 years - and is found chock-full of amazing antiques that will fetch millions at auction. But what April really gets engrossed in (besides the avoidance of her curmbling marriage at home) are the apartment owner's diaries, revealing her to be a renowned courtesan of her time and telling of how the treasures in this apartment came to be there. When it comes to historical fiction, I enjoy books that do this back and forth of modern day investigation into the historical aspect, alternating with first-person perspective in the historical context. While I tend to enjoy the modern-day story more, in this one the historical chapters really didn't work for me. I thought the character was kind of shallow and self-centered, which might be reflective of her position (i.e. making her living in and the era, but there were a lot of passages in the diaries that I just didn't think worked for purporting to be written in the 1890s. It was a change of pace in the historical era that I've read about any time recently though (Belle Époque, from about 1870-1914), so I found that interesting, and I liked getting a view of both that Paris and the current one - and the objects and attitudes that have carried over through history - before I travel there. The Paris descriptions were some of my favorite parts. Also, I really enjoy an art history twist on a story, so that bumped up the rating about half a star. A more favorite in this French art history + modern day story category would be Jojo Moyes'
The Girl You Left Behind.
3/5 stars
Little Paris Bookshop
Here's another book that I was excited to read to get a pre-travel flavor of Paris, as the story incorporates my other favorite focus besides an art historical lean: bookshops and literary type people. This one really sounded like a winner, being about a man who owns a bookshop housed in a barge on the Seine River in Paris (I hope one of these actually exists because I really want to visit one!), who serves as kind of a literary apothecary, prescribing the perfect book to solve his customers' emotional needs. Alas, that wasn't enough to carry the story for me, partly because it felt like that was just such a small part of the overall narrative, which also encompassed the quirky characters in his apartment building, his long-lost love, a new love, a young writer suffering from writer's block, and on and on. It's like the book was trying to be and do and have too many things: romance, travelogue, magical realism, quirky characters, philosophical characters, literary references, allegory. The descriptions of the French countryside, as Monsieur Perdu takes his boat out of Paris and down the Seine, were lovely, but the slow-moving (yet all over the place) story was just not for me - perhaps something was lost in translation. Note: I was provided a copy of this book by
Blogging for Books; all opinions are (obviously) my own.
2/5 stars
The Red Notebook
Staying in the category of little Parisian bookshops that sounds so appealing to me, this very short book drew me right in with much smoother and more charming writing, a much more successful capturing of the French joie de vivre and charm and eccentricities I was hoping for. It's almost like a French “While You Were Sleeping,” but with literature lovers at the heart of it - a nice combination of romance and mystery. Bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag in the street left after a mugging, and based on the intriguing contents inside (including the red notebook with her interesting lists and musings), he becomes fixated on identifying and finding the owner so that he can return it - and ends up falling for this mystery woman, all the while she is in a coma in the hospital. You'll get through this one really fast and be completely drawn into these Parisian lives. It's really delightful.
4/5 stars
The Sweet Life in Paris
I have managed a few non-fiction Paris books, but rather than being about travel, they're a lot more about the food... In this collection musings on life as an American in Paris, pastry chef David Lebovitz provides a (sometimes cheeky) view of the cultural and culinary differences, and some of the mystifying idiosyncrasies of French life. I enjoyed the view of the city (and a perspective on the realities of everyone's secret dream of packing up and moving to Paris), but I really wished for more of a story than just a bunch of short essays - doesn't do enough to draw this novel-lover into the world of nonfiction. Also: though lacking the mouthwatering recipes provided at the end of each chapter in this book, I think
David Sedaris' essays on adjusting to life in France are funnier.
3/5 stars
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry
We know nonfiction isn’t my favorite, but this one drew me in from page one. Kathleen Flinn gets laid off from her corporate job and in this moment of vocational crisis decides to pursue a long-time dream: moving to Paris and enrolling at the famous cooking school Le Cordon Bleu. The book chronicles her year there: the things she learned not just about cooking but also about life and love and friendship and more. I loved how, despite the "nonfiction" category, there was still a strong narrative, still
characters. And they were great ones - I loved the personalities of the different chefs from the jolly to the intimidating task masters, the diverse classmates from every country and background experience, and even the translators in the classroom. It also comes complete with a recipe at the end of each chapter, should you want to literally taste all of the different flavors of Paris this book has to offer. If you’re fascinated by Top Chef or the inner workings of restaurants and chefs’ lives, or if you have dreams of living abroad, definitely give it a read. (And now I want to read her
Kitchen Counter Cooking School, a WSIRN recommendation that led me to this book).
4/5 stars
Next up I'm excited to read Jojo Moyes'
Honeymoon in Paris, a novella that leads in to
The Girl You Left Behind (also her
forthcoming book is a Paris one too! now I probably need to pull myself away from the novels to brush up on my French... not much time left to dig those two semesters of classes out of the back of my brain!
