How to even translate the meaning of this title. Couver means to cover, but that is insufficient to describe what Sophie Fontanel means when she writeHow to even translate the meaning of this title. Couver means to cover, but that is insufficient to describe what Sophie Fontanel means when she writes 'Couver un astre'. She is referring to the large helium balloon that the designer Mathieu Lehanneur created for the Paris Olympics in July/August 2024 and the attachment and adoration and psychological effect this 'Boule' had on her and much of the population, as it sat in the Jardin des Tuileries and every evening rose up skywards and settled up there and then during the day descended.
In her slim, contemplative work, she describes her own cynicism about the arrival of the Olympics and all the unwanted infrastructure and inconvenience and people and disturbance. So much so, that she left the city for the opening ceremony week and went off to a Greek Island with friends, while her friend quit Bretagne and came to Paris for a month to be part of it. She owns up to exaggerating her anticipated frustrations, but what she isn't prepared for on her return, is the effect of a giant balloon, seen from the window of her apartment, a balloon that draws crowds as it rises every evening and descends every morning, quietly elevating the 'joie de vivre' of those who witness it.
The book is written during that summer, in sections relating to proximity of observation. It begins with a series of 8 black and white photos over 4 pages that show the rise and descent of the magnificent creation, followed by: A Prologue De loin (From afar) De près (Up Close) De plus près (Closer) De tout près (Up Very Close) An Epilogue, by Mathieu Lehanneur
There is her contemplation and wonder of it, occasional conversations, both with friends and strangers, various encounters, concluding with that of the inventor/designer himself, who adds her name to a list of invitees after he comes across one of her instagram posts and responds to her with his own question. A kind of invitation to respond, that manifests into an actual invitation to do what he suggests, to get closer and observe from yet another perspective, the magic of this phenomena.
I bought this as a gift for a few of my French friends, who were somewhat ambivalent about the then approaching season of the Olympics and who were pleasantly surprised by their own reactions. This is a testament to the idea that magic can arrive through creativity and community, that the presence of a balloon can lift spirits, as most children know and many adults have forgotten.
I adored this little book and highly recommend it if you took any pleasure in the summer of 2024 Paris and wished to remember the good feeling it brought about in many.
For the moment it is published in French, hopefully it will get picked up and translated into English....more
Neither memoir or autobiography, it is a unique compilation of memory, experiences, judgments, of political, cultural, personal and collective statemeNeither memoir or autobiography, it is a unique compilation of memory, experiences, judgments, of political, cultural, personal and collective statements and images that represent a woman living through those years.
It is bookended by descriptions of things seen that are likely never to be seen again. It gets your attention from these opening lines.
All the images will disappear:
the woman who squatted to urinate in broad daylight, behind the shack that served coffee at the edge of the ruins in Yvetot, after the war, who stood, skirts lifted, to pull up her underwear and then returned to the café
the tearful face of Alida Valli as she danced with Georges Wilson in the film The Long Absence
There is no call for literary devices or beautification of language or hiding the crude, raw human elements that some may grimace at.
When Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022, she gave a speech entitled I Will Write to Avenge My People in which she described deciding on and finding her writing voice, that it would not be like that used by the esteemed writers she taught her students.
What came to me spontaneously was the clamour of a language which conveyed anger and derision, even crudeness; a language of excess, insurgent, often used by the humiliated and offended as their only response to the memory of others’ contempt, of shame and shame at feeling shame.
Raised by shopkeepers/cafe owners, she considered herself a class-defector through her education alongside the sons and daughters of bourgeoise families. She would find a way through the language she used to address that betrayal, to elude the gaze of the culturally privileged reader.
I adopted a neutral, objective kind of writing, ‘flat’ in the sense that it contained neither metaphors nor signs of emotion. The violence was no longer displayed; it came from the facts themselves and not the writing. Finding the words that contain both reality and the sensation provided by reality would become, and remain to this day, my ongoing concern in writing, no matter what the subject.
For Ernaux, class mobility is a violent, brutal process and she sees it as her duty to at least attempt, via her authorship, to make amends to those she remembers, has left behind and to not hide from her own perspective, actions, behaviours.
Knowing that The Years was considered her masterpiece, I decided to read some of her earlier short works, to engage with her style and thus appreciate this work all the more and that has certainly been the case. I began with the book she wrote of her father La Place (A Man’s Place), then of childhood Shame, and an affair Simple Passion. I do think it is a good idea to read some of these shorter works before taking on The Years.
In effect The Years is an attempt to collate and offer a faithful account of an entire generation, as it was viewed by one woman and the collective that she was part of. The narrative therefore is written from the perspective of ‘she‘ and ‘we‘, there is no ‘I‘. It is an observation of the times passing and the inclinations of people, for better or worse.
She would like to assemble these multiple images of herself, separate and discordant, thread them together with the story of her existence, starting with her birth during World War II up until the present day. Therefore, an existence that is singular but also merged with the movements of a generation.
We read and witness the impact of school, religion, the media, politics on a generation, alongside the cultural influences, the strikes, the films, the advertising, the village gossip and children’s cruelty.
Public or private, school was a place where immutable knowledge was imparted in silence and order, with respect for hierarchy and absolute submission, that is, to wear a smock, line up at the sound of the bell, stand when the headmistress or Mother Superior (but not a teaching assistant) entered the room, to equip oneself with regulation notebooks, pens and pencils, refrain from talking back when observations were made and from wearing trousers in the winter without a skirt over the top. Only teachers were allowed to ask questions. If we did not understand a word or explanation, the fault was ours. We were proud, as of a privilege, to be bound by strict rules and confinement. The uniform required of private institutions was visible proof of their perfection.
While some aspects will be universal, it is by its nature a collective and singular memory of a life in France. That will interest some and not others, but as someone who lives in France today, it is interesting to read of the familiar and also the references to the particular, the cultural, the influences.
Between what happens in the world and what happens to her, there is no point of convergence. They are two parallel series: one abstract, all information no sooner received than forgotten, the other all static shots.
Because it is clearly written over the many, many years, it comes across as being always in the now, as if she is time travelling into the various versions of the self over the years, looking and noting down the visual memories, remembering and accessing the perspective of the time they were in.
So her book’s form can only emerge from her complete immersion in the images from her memory in order to identify, with relative certainty, the specific signs of the times, the years to which the images belong, gradually linking them to others; to try to hear the words people spoke, what they said about events and things, skim it off the mass of floating speech, that hub bub that tirelessly ferries the wordings and rewordings of what we are and what we must be, think, believe, fear, and hope. All that the world had pressed upon her and her contemporaries she will reuse to reconstitute a common time, the one that made its way through the years of the distant past and glided all the way to the present. By retrieving the memory of collective memory in an individual memory, she will capture the lived dimension of History.
I found it an absolutely compelling read, filling in a lot of gaps and knowledge regarding French history that I happily encounter in this kind of format.
Highly recommended if you are interested in French cultural and personal history from a unique literary perspective....more
This is a brilliant introduction to the work and writing of Annie Ernaux, the title alluding to her search for the perfect opening line to her noble pThis is a brilliant introduction to the work and writing of Annie Ernaux, the title alluding to her search for the perfect opening line to her noble prize lecture:
Finding the sentence that will give me the freedom and the firmness to speak without trembling in this place to which you have invited me this evening.
She doesn't have to look far, she says, though the line she is referring to, the title of this talk, is one she wrote in her diary sixty years ago.
j'écrirai pour venger ma race
It was written when she was 22 years old, the daughter of working class parents, studying literature in a faculty of sons and daughter of the local bourgeoise and it was a reference to, or an echo of cry:
'I am of an inferior race for all eternity.'
A young woman, the first of her family to be university educated, her youthful idealism was projected into those words.
I proudly and naively believed that writing books, becoming a writer, as the last in a line of land-less labourers, factory workers and shop keepers, people despised for their manners, their accent, their lack of education, would be enough to redress the social injustice linked to socila class at birth.
Her first attempt at the novel was rejected by multiple publishers, but it was not this that subdued her desire and pride, and seek her to find a new form of expression.
It was life situations in which the weight of difference between a woman's existence and that of a man was keenly felt in a society where roles were defined by gender, where contraception was prohibited and termination of pregnancy a crime.
These situations and circumstances instilled in her a pressing need to move away from the "illusory 'writing about nothing' of my twenties, towards shining light on how her people lived, and to understand the reasons that had caused such distance to her origins.
Like an immigrant now speaking a language not their own, as a class-defector, she too had to find her own language, it wasn't to found in the pages of the esteemed writers she had been studying:
I had to break with 'writing well' and beautiful sentences - the very kind I taught my students to write - to root out, display and understand the rift running through me. What came to me spontaneously was the clamour of a language which conveyed anger and derision, even crudeness; a language of excess, insurgent, often used by the humiliated and offended as their only response to the memory of others' contempt, of shame and shame at feeling shame.
Recognising that when a reader was culturally privileged they would maintain the same imposing and condescending outlook on a character ina book as they would in real life, she sought to elude that kind of gaze and thus was born her trademark style:
I adopted a neutral, objective kind of writing, 'flat' in the sense that it contained neither metaphors nor signs of emotion. The violence was no longer displayed; it came from the facts themselves and not the writing. Finding the words that contain both reality and the sensation provided by reality would become, and remain to this day, my ongoing concern in writing, no matter what the subject.
It's an enrapturing lecture and an excellent introduction and insight into Ernaux's particular and individual style, and wonderful that her volume of work has been recognised and celebrated at this esteemed level....more
An excellent account of the creation of the Alliance, one of the original resistance networks in France, founded by Navarre and Fourcade and continuedAn excellent account of the creation of the Alliance, one of the original resistance networks in France, founded by Navarre and Fourcade and continued/lead throughout the war by her after he was arrested.
Marie Madeleine’s father worked for a French shipping company in Shanghai. Her mother refused to stay behind in Paris, though agreed to return to Marseille for the birth of her daughter in 1909. Marie-Madeleine and her siblings grew up in Shanghai, with freedoms unheard of for the social and family circles they hailed from. Those freedoms, an early bilingual education and their return to Paris when she was 10 years old, set her up in many ways for the future role she would play, organising and ultimately leading an important French intelligence network.
As a young woman, she again lived abroad, in Morocco. She drove a car, learned to fly a plane and had a job. She rejected French society’s (and her husband’s) restrictive ideas about how women should behave. She had trained to become a concert pianist, worked at a commercial radio station and would forge her own future.
Access to Important Connections, Two Rivals Though never in the military herself, she was married briefly to a French military officer, as was her sister. She thus had opportunity to meet and observe some of the younger officers through her social connections, men who would later become important during the war years.
Two of the most prominent members of that younger group – Lieutenant Colonel Charles de Gaulle and Major Georges Loustaunau Lacau – took centre stage in the discussion on rue Vaneau, engaging in a debate that quickly escalated into a full-blown argument. It soon became obvious to Marie-Madeleine that the two officers viewed each other as rivals…
Both products of Saint-Cyr, France’s elite military academy Ecole Supérieure de Guerre, both fought and received multiple citations for bravery in WWI; they were brilliant, ambitious and egocentric. A rebellious streak put them at odds with Marshal Philippe Pétain (a French general who commanded the French Army in WW1 and would become head of what became known as the Régime de Vichy Vichy France). The rivalry between the pair would also keep them from being unified during the war years and likely impacted perceptions afterwards.
A Partnership, A Turning Point
After a discussion at one of the social events around March 1936, Loustaunau-Lacau contacted Marie-Madeleine and asked for her help in creating a journal that would argue the case for reform of the military and open the eyes of leaders to the imminent threat of Germany. The work would begin immediately.
“One of my Belgian friends has procured secret dossiers that expose the intentions of the German high command,” he said. “I need to get them quickly. Such documents must not travel by mail. You have a car. You must go to Brussels and collect them. I will pay all expenses.”
An Intelligence Network is Formed, Working Inside France
Caught up in this real life spy drama, Marie-Madeleine agreed – a decision that would radically change her life. From that moment, she wrote later, she and Loustaunau-Lacau began building an intelligence network against Nazi Germany.
Over the next two years, they would recruit informants in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany who passed on reports about the build up of the German armed forces. Loustaunau-Lacau adopted the codename Navarre, after Henri de Navarre, later King Henri IV of France. Given the risks they faced, that one of them might be captured or killed, Navarre insisted they share leadership of the network and when he was compromised, as promised Fourcade took the lead role.
At the same time, backbencher in the British House of Commons, Winston Churchill had created a similar private network and Charles de Gaulle decamped to London, setting up his Free French operation. Fourcade suggested they join with him.
Her mentor rejected the idea outright. In England, he said, they would be refugees, just like de Gaulle, dependent on the British for everything. At that point, almost no one in the British government, with the promising exception of Winston Churchill, took de Gaulle and his minuscule band of followers seriously.
They would resist from within.
Another Perspective of History
Madame Fourcade’s Secret War is a work of history, told in a compelling narrative voice, that not only focuses on the leadership role of this one extraordinary woman, but will likely expand most reader’s knowledge of what living in France under German occupation was like for the many, who vehemently opposed the way their government had capitulated to a hostile outside force, without much initial resistance.
Personally, the history I learned in school was quite different, as it was told from a very anglo-centric perspective, so the narratives stemmed from how this threat impacted the United Kingdom and their allies.
I never really understood what exactly happened within France in the lead up to the occupation, how it impacted their government and rendered the military ineffective. So many of the protections a country might normally expect when facing a hostile enemy were lacking; to go against the orders of a government (even if under occupation) was a betrayal.
Cinema Can Create Its Own Self Serving Narrative Though there have been books and films about the war and the French resistance, little has been shown of the importance of the Alliance network and of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade’s achievements. Most of the attention has gone to stories of sabotage and escape lines, of battles and blitzes.
Saboteurs and other resistance fighters in France were certainly important after D-Day, but they did little to obstruct the Germans before then. Escape networks did heroic work in smuggling shot-down Allied airmen and others out of occupied Europe and back to freedom, but their actual contribution to victory was small.
I would certainly be interested in a cinematic development of Fourcade’s story, one that traverses France and shows a very different side to those who travelling around the country, making radio transmissions and secret flights across the channel, where they are hosted by memorable characters in this real life adventure.
Noah’s Ark and the Hedgehog
In the late 1960’s Fourcade would get her story down in a gripping memoir entitled L'arche de Noé Réseau Alliance 1940-1945 (Noah’s Ark), the name the German’s referred to their network as, after they would use codenames of animals, Fourcade’s was hérrison (hedgehog), a small animal that intelligently eluded predators.
Lynne Olson provides a thoroughly researched, immensely readable account of the creation of the Alliance, one of the original and most important resistance networks in France. From its foundation by Navarre and Fourcade to the establishment of thousands of recruits, the many dangerous activities they undertook, throughout the war, all that was able to be continued by Fourcade due to her continued leadership deserves to be more widely recognised and appreciated.
They Will Not Be Forgotten, The People
The book is full of stories about the different people she recruited, the relationships and loyalties and daring escapades each of them went on, in order to bring their intelligence to the Alliance.
It is also, sadly, a homage to those who would be punished and killed for their roles, some, so close to the end of the war, it is excruciating to read. That Fourcade survived and was able to share her story and thus the courage and bravery and loyalty of others is a true gift to all humanity.
It’s the first time I have read an account that centres what was happening in France at this local level, with a more global scope, that renders the dangerous and delicate situation of those in the military, who were against the capitulation of their government. While in great danger to themselves, they were able to band together like-minded civilians and provide those on the outside with the information they needed to mount a significant and ultimately successful defence.
Timely read of an essay penned for youth by a man in the final decade of his life, having lived through it all, from escaping a death sentence in a WWTimely read of an essay penned for youth by a man in the final decade of his life, having lived through it all, from escaping a death sentence in a WWII German concentration camp to contributing to the creation of the declaration of human rights, an inspiration until the end.
A quick half hour read, an essay that inspired a lycée in the avenue de champagne of Erpernay (that I walked past and noticed last week - inspiring me to pick up the essay), to change its name.
Three, (a 575 page chunkster) is something of a coming-of-age tale of three young people in a small provincial French town, intersecThe Ties That Bind
Three, (a 575 page chunkster) is something of a coming-of-age tale of three young people in a small provincial French town, intersecting with the mystery of why they no longer speak to each other, 30 years on.
“They were united by the same ideal: leaving when they were grown up. Quitting this hole to go and live in a city full of traffic lights, noise, and frenzy, of escalators and store windows, with bright lights everywhere, even in the middle of the night. With crowds on the pavements, of strangers, of foreigners one can’t gossip about.”
Set in 1986, the years they were at high school together and 2017 – the year a car is retrieved from the bottom of a lake with the remains of human bones in the back seat – the novel glides back and forth over time, scene by scene, recounting a kaleidoscope of episodes among the three that slowly reveal the depth of their relationships to each other and how they were torn apart.
“Étienne was the leader, Nina the heart, and Adrien followed with never a complaint.”
Unconventional Families
Nina was raised by her grandfather and never knew her single mother. She is both curious and resentful about Marion, with good reason. Having such loyal friends as Adrien and Étienne and the assurity of her grandfather’s presence, she feels secure. He is worried about her, she exhibits signs of taking after her mother, traits he is determined to stamp out.
“He panics. Like lightning in his eyes. He’s brought straight back to his daughter, Marion. His punishment. She was the same. Something like misfortune running in their veins. The mother has contaminated the daughter. An affliction.”
Adrien lives with his mother Josephine. He sees his father occasionally, a man married to another, who will never leave his wife. He becomes the victim of a bullying teacher at school, the same year he becomes part of the Three. The school year that gave him two friends and took away his innocence.
“Sometimes, he would reappear. Like some public-works inspector, or cop. He barely rang the doorbell before coming in. He would glance around the apartment, at the paintwork, the plumbing, Adrien’s school report, leave yet another cheque on the table in the sitting room, and leave. No doubt his conscience clear.”
When the car is dredged from the bottom of the lake, a fourth voice, the only first person narrator in the novel appears. Virginie is a journalist, clearly someone who was at school with the Three. This character is something of an enigma, never mentioned in the adventures of the Three.
“They had no friends but themselves.They were almost stuck to each other, like puppies from the same litter. And yet, they in no way resembled each other. Neither physically, nor in their attitudes.”
Creating Suspense and Intrigue
Valérie Perrin is quite the master at withholding and timing revelations, drip feeding events, turning points and characters to increase the intrigue, leading the reader down various paths of speculation, until further scenes reveal a bigger picture.
As major events occur, we witness how the three respond, how their dreams are both pursued and thwarted, how secrets eat away at them and ultimately how the strength and belief in their friendship can help them, if they can overcome their inner obstacles.
Ultimately, while there is an engaging plot and a multitude of minor intrigues layered around the central mystery, it is a novel that dissects friendship, its random formation and sense of belonging, its source of support to each person and potential for envy and destruction by those outside of it.
Over thirty years, they will make their mistakes, drift apart, come together, indulge resentments, forgive each other and come to realise that acceptance and truth can set them free from pain and longing, that personal histories matter and those who were part of them can help each other to heal.
A Feast of Issues, A Famine of Depth
It is an entertaining and enjoyable novel, the way the text goes back and forth, the slow reveal, felt very much like something written for the screen, not surprising given that the author is a photographer and screenwriter.
My criticism would be that there is an attempt to pack too much into the novel; weighty issues, each of which could have been a central theme of the novel. The sheer number of significant issues it raises, in some way dilutes them and compromises the authenticity of some of the secondary characters.
The author has ambitious ideas and an interest in social issues, but as a result some are dealt with too lightly, or used to create intrigue, which at times felt inauthentic, a disservice. It’s neither a conventional mystery/thriller or literary fiction, it sits somewhere between the two, something of a hybrid....more
A relatively short and simple tale told from the perspective of two people who encounter Michka, Marie who has known her since childhood, the girl upsA relatively short and simple tale told from the perspective of two people who encounter Michka, Marie who has known her since childhood, the girl upstairs who knocked on her neighbours door and whose lives became entwined from then on and Jérôme, the orthophonist/speech therapist who visits her periodically in the care home she spent her days in, when words began to leave her.
It is Marie who in the opening pages questions what it means to have gratitude and how to show it to or for someone who has been important in one's life. And Jérôme wishes there was a forewarning system, to let us know when someone's time is imminent.
The narrative switches between the two as first Marie recalls the day everything changed, when Michka lost her independence and then moments are shared while he is in care, Michka's conversation affected by her asphasia, the impairment of her use of language, other words jump ahead pushing out the one she wishes to say.
It is a slice of life and a look into that part of it that is imperfect, that part when some have to be at the mercy of others, in a facility that diminishes the end, possibly brings it on more quickly.
Michka has an unresolved matter to deal with and in her sessions with Jérome, which she often sabotages to question him about his father, she tells him of her regret, the thing she is unable to do for herself. Time is running out.
Gratitude is a life-affirming read, even if there are sad undertones, showing there exist all manner of souls around, those that want to hurry us along, and those that without expectation of reward are willing to go out of their way to help another.
Not as compelling as The Claudine stories but I appreciated the style and the way she dissects the flawed self of her characteMore thoughts to come...
Not as compelling as The Claudine stories but I appreciated the style and the way she dissects the flawed self of her character Renée, whose perceptiveness and analysis always keeps her one step ahead of any eventuality, so that nothing appears to happen spontaneously.
Renée is 36, single (has been mariired) and has come into an inheritance that makes her financially dependent, so she is trying on that lifestyle after having been an actress in the theatre. She likes to observe people around her and when we meet her she has just observed a man walking the Promenade des Anglais in Nice with his wife and child, a man who has not noticed her at all, a man she rejected a couple of years before, his presence and ignorance of her elicits pangs of rejection and jealousy and disturbs her. It is a foreshadow of much of what will follow, as she fails to find the contentment she seeks.
She resists that which she seeks, refuses that which is already written and despite asserting her independence finds herself falling for the man she had been trying to convince herself she had no feeling for.
I will be intrigued to read what Vivian Gornick has to say about reading this in the 60's in her new Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader, which is the reason I picked up The Shackle to read. Well that and because I think Colette herself is such an intriguing character....more
While I usually steer clear of memoirs set in France, M.F.K.Fisher (1908-1992) is a writer I’ve long intended to read. She was an American nonfiction While I usually steer clear of memoirs set in France, M.F.K.Fisher (1908-1992) is a writer I’ve long intended to read. She was an American nonfiction writer whose wrote about food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy.
Fisher lived in Dijon for a few years as a young bride, but now it is 1954 and she is a widow with two young daughters spending a year in Aix-en-Provence at a time when France is still reeling from the effect of the second world war. Fisher too is recovering from raw emotional wounds.
While being in Aix makes her feel alive, a sense of frustration seeps through the pages as she describes feeling largely invisible and worse, looked down upon.
She is keenly aware that the grand dames consider her an ‘outlander’, an emissary from a graceless, culture-less people.
Living here has given her a thick skin, a confidence and an extra sense with which to navigate the world.
Over the years I have taught myself, and have been taught, to be a stranger. A stranger usually has the normal five senses, perhaps especially so, ready to protect and nourish him.
Then there are the extra senses that function only in the subconsciousness. These are perhaps a stranger’s best allies, the ones that stay on and grow stronger as time passes and immediacy dwindles. It is with these senses that she creates her map of the town, Aix-en-Provence.
She finds just the right words to describe the near indescribable, whether it’s the cafes, the main street or the people, and though all of the characters she writes about have long gone, the edifices remain and it is easy to imagine how this place we live in was back when she inhabited it. In reality, little has changed, except that today it is a ghost town.
After reading the initial chapters, I stopped reading for a couple of months just after the chapters The Gypsy Way and The Foreigner, which were somewhat xenophobic. Then I picked this up again and was relieved to find the next essays as delightful as the debut and way more humorous. I found that Fisher was more entertaining when observing herself than she was observing others.
My favourite essay ‘A Familiar’ didn’t even take place in Aix, it’s a stream-of-consciousness narrative of six hours spent in the train station of Lucerne after being sold a ticket for a non-existent train. Refusing to allow herself to venture outside, she orders a vermouth-gin in the station restaurant to ease her awkwardness.
I would have liked to order at least two more, but although I had to laugh at myself I was afraid that the maid, already somewhat alarmed at my ordering such a potion … a woman alone … would report me to the police who must be somewhere handy in the enormous station.
And in the essay ‘The Unwritten Books’, she visits a cake shop, asking the pastry chef to make a cake, one drawn by her young daughter, a cross cultural hilarity, not to mention the proprietors constant refusal to hear her other request, to provide her with a calendar of culinary events, for which there is only ever one reply, an(other) invitation to visit the calisson factory? Priceless!
A must read certainly if you know and love Aix-en-Provence, this is an outsiders insight into the old city, one who has fallen for its charm, cursed by her inability to meld completely into it. Humorous in some parts, cringworthy in others, overall a delight and superbly descriptive....more
Another satisfying light read full of laughs from Antoine Laurain. It's so rare that a book actually makes me laugh out loud, but this one did, quite Another satisfying light read full of laughs from Antoine Laurain. It's so rare that a book actually makes me laugh out loud, but this one did, quite a few times.
It's far-fetched, but knowing he writes an uplifting tale and creates such fun characters makes me want to read everything he writes.
Here, its 2017 and we meet a Parisian man named Hubert who lives in a building that has been in his family for generations, though now he owns only the apartment he lives in. His wife and daughters are away, he has just attended the management committee meeting and goes into his cellar when he finds a dusty 1954 Vintage Beaujolais. Accidentally locking himself in, he is rescued by Bob from Milwaukee, who's rented Madame Renaud's apartment on AirBnB (say you're the American cousin if anyone asks) so in a gesture of appreciation Hubert invites Bob and two other tenants Julien ( a cocktail waiter) and Magalie (a restorer of antique ceramics) to join him to open the bottle.
1954 was a special year and the novel has already taken us to the Saint Antoine vineyards where the grapes may have been infused with a bit of magic from a low flying unidentified object. Pierre Chauveau (Julien's great grandfather) gave a testimony describing what he had seen and was mocked by villagers for it, he drank a bottle of the 1954 Beaujolais, gave some to his dog (as he had the habit of doing), went out for a walk and was never seen again.
The morning after the four in Paris drink the vintage wine, they wake up in 1954. As they head out into their day, we too are taken back in time and see the city and people's habits as they were back in the 50's. Bob, who has never been to Paris takes the longest time to realise he's no longer in 2017. The four of them have various interesting encounters and then come up with a plan on how to get themselves back to their present.
It's a fun ride, entertaining, and brings back to life some of the memorable characters of Paris of a bygone era. It would look great on screen to see how different Paris was....more
![[(Time for Outrage!)] [Author: Stephane Hessel] published on (August, 2011)](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1698018041l/131354189._SX50_.jpg)
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