Books |
Paris: A Reading List
By
Published: Jul 13, 2017
Category:
Fiction
Mission to Paris
The first paragraph of Alan Furst’s novel should convince you:
In Paris, the evenings of September are sometimes warm, excessively gentle, and, in the magic particular to that city, irresistibly seductive. The autumn of 1938 began in just such weather and on the terraces of the best cafés, in the famous restaurants, at the dinner parties one wished to attend, the conversation was, of necessity, lively and smart: fashion, cinema, love affairs, politics, and, yes, the possibility of war—that too had its moment. Almost anything, really, except money. Or, rather, German money. A curious silence, for hundreds of millions of francs — tens of millions of dollars — had been paid to some of the most distinguished citizens of France since Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933. But maybe not so curious, because those who had taken the money were aware of a certain shadow in these transactions and, in that shadow, the people who require darkness for the kind of work they do.
Between Meals
In 1926, A.J. Liebling had graduated from college and had bungled his first job as a reporter in Providence, Rhode Island. It seemed to his father that this was a good time for him to study for a year in Europe. Liebling pretended to protest. “I’m thinking of getting married,” he lied. “Of course, she’s ten years older than I am….”
The story of his romance — which was utterly fabricated — worked like a charm. His father, eager to help his son avoid a disastrous marriage, not only bought him a steamship ticket, he gave him a $2,000 line of credit. And Liebling went to Paris and began to eat.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin
Arsene Lupin — you know him not, but to generations of European readers he was the French Sherlock Holmes. Well, better than the Brit detective. Holmes was on the side of the law, a stodgy enterprise. But Lupin was a burglar. A gentleman burglar. A burglar with wit and style. It was a thrill to watch him work.
In the most famous of the Arsene Lupin stories, he breaks into a Baron’s residence, takes nothing, but leaves a card for his unwitting host: “Arsene Lupin, gentleman burglar, will return when the furniture is genuine.”
Bel-Ami
George — the kind of handsome guy from the country who, for lack of a better thing to do, joins the Army — finishes his military service without a prospect in the world. He moves to the big city, because that’s where opportunity lies. But he gets a lousy job and is totally frustrated. One evening he runs into Charles, an old Army buddy who’s now a newspaper editor. Charles has an idea: George should write up his wartime experiences, Charles will publish them, and then George will have some business and social credibility. One problem: George can’t write. No problem: Charles’s wife will help him.
Paris Chic
This is like a visit with a friendly, clear-eyed woman you trust immediately. It’s the best kind of guidebook — you not only get information, you get it in context. At 230 pages, published in nicely bound soft covers, with whimsical illustrations and terrific photographs, Inès de la Fressange’s book is the best guide to personal style — and to Paris — I’ve ever seen. If I were a woman and had any relationship to Paris, I’d memorize it.
Simple Passion
You wait for the phone to ring. That’s your life, waiting. You never know when he’ll call, so you leave your home as little as possible. Hair dryers and vacuum cleaners make noise that could drown out a ringing phone; you use them sparingly. And then, without warning, there’s the voice you crave — he can be free for a few hours without his wife getting curious.
An Hour from Paris
The most exciting travel guide I’ve read in years. Its author, Annabel Simms, is a Brit who moved to Paris and developed a deep knowledge of the fifth arrondissement. Business took her to the modern, soulless inner suburbs. Then an urge “to get into the countryside, any countryside” led her to discover France’s excellent network of commuter trains — and what she was looking for. The 21 day trips of this book, which has been revised and updated several times, are the happy result.
My Life in France
Julia Child’s first meal, in Rouen, started with oysters, served with a pale rye bread and unsalted butter. They were followed by sole meuniere, “perfectly browned in a sputtering butter sauce with a sprinkling of chopped parsley.” Mr. and Mrs. Child washed it down with a bottle of Pouilly-Fume. They moved on to a green salad and a baguette, fromage blanc and cafe filtre. “Absolute perfection,” Julia decided. “The most exciting meal of my life.”
The World of Madeleine Castaing
She was French — born near Chartres in 1894, dead at age 98 in 1992 — but you can’t really say she was a French decorator. “I can take inspiration from a scene in Chekhov as from a dress by Goya,” she said, and she wasn’t kidding. In one of her rooms, you could be in Russia, in another room London. Most of the time, the mood she created was timeless, poetic, a fantasy. As she said, “There is always beauty in mystery.”
Elsie de Wolfe’s Paris: Frivolity Before the Storm
200 unpublished photographs of Elsie de Wolfe’s 1939 “Circus Ball.” He’s used these as the centerpiece of a book that is, on the surface, a voyeur’s dream. It’s more: a behind-the-scenes look at the high water mark of a kind of entertaining that went extinct two months later, when Hitler invaded Poland. A deep dive, an X-ray of an elite Society that took dinner parties and balls as seriously as we take our work — because it was their work.
Lou Doillon
She’s the daughter of Jane Birkin (yes, the inspiration for the Birkin bag.) Her half-sister is Charlotte Gainsbourg. She started acting at 5, and has appeared in 80 movies. Tall, stick thin, she is the face and muse of Givenchy. And, last year, at 30, she launched a music career with a CD called “Places,” which astonished its creator and the French audience alike when she was named best female performer of the year at Les Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent of the Grammys.
Tell No One
A man whose wife was murdered died eight years previously suddenly starts receiving e-mail messages containing real-time videos of her that appear to have been shot days before. All the messages are marked, “Tell no one.” Are they real? Is she alive?
