My granddaughter and I were enjoying a wander around Barnes and Noble. I was telling her how much I had liked being in Florence the previous year and reading fiction based in that city. I was about to spend a few days in Paris and was wondering what I should read there. We wandered some more and then she appeared around the corner with a big smile on her face, holding out a book: ‘A Paris Novel.’ Well, yes, how could that not be the right reading matter to take on my trip?
It worked for me. I began it on my outward journey on Eurostar and finished on my last night in Paris.
Coming to write about it I did something I don’t usually do, and that is read some reviews before I wrote mine. I don’t think it’s something I will repeat. Everyone is different, everyone takes their own life experiences to a book, everyone comes from a certain angle. A couple of reviews made me wonder if we were thinking of the same book.
Anyway, Stella lives and works in New York City, she is estranged from her mother and has never known who her father is. Upon the death of her mother she is surprised to learn that she has been left a considerable amount of money but there is a caveat, some of the money must be used to buy a ticket to Paris. Stella does not know why this is but eventually she goes and that really is where the story starts.
Ruth Reichl, is a writer who is known in America for her memoir writing and for her books and articles about food. She is relatively new to fiction. Maybe that shows in the structure of this book as on occasions I thought the narrative was trying to be too many things at once, but it was still enjoyable with that particular Parisian flavour, obviously enhanced for me as I was actually there.
The couple of reviews that were really bad (it seriously was not a good idea to read them!) were about an early chapter when Stella reveals she was the victim of sexual abuse as a child.
One writer said she couldn’t read any further as she was traumatised and another said it had given her nightmares. Goodness me, there was no graphic description. The range of fiction that they can cope with must be very narrow. For me, that chapter explained why Stella was inhibited, timid, suspicious and often negative about any possible new relationship.
Stella gradually flowers in Paris and is open to what life has to offer. The writing about new foods and tastes that she experiences is passionate. Ruth Reichl’s food columns must be a delight to read. There is art and books and architecture as well as romantic interest. I did say it was rather all encompassing.
Added to all this is the involvement of the famous bookshop ‘Shakespeare and Co.’ Stella becomes a tumbleweed there for a short while. If you are not familiar, a tumbleweed in this context is a young, aspiring writer who lives, eats, sleeps in the shop for free, just making themselves available for odd jobs. I suspect that this practice has now stopped but I don’t know. The story is set in the 1980s.
So, I liked this book. I probably won’t read it again but it was exactly right for being a good Parisian read. It’s one of those books where you know things will turn out well and although it’s not bluntly put in front of your face, you have a very good idea how this will come about.
Maybe you’d like it?!