Paris Was Ours

December 13, 2010
In original and previously published essays, 32 diverse writers share both exciting and depressing Paris moments. Diane Johnson, evaluating French stereotypes, was surprised that French hostesses serve store-bought entrees. Jeremy Mercer was taken in by the owner of the famous bookstore Shakespeare & Co., living there rent-free (downstairs “with the riffraff,” and Janine di Giovanni saw French mothers hit their children to enforce good manners. In three of the most substantial essays, Alicia Drake muses on the disconcerting ability of the French to accept human faults as she visits sites from which the Nazis, aided by French police, deported Jews to their deaths; Stacy Schiff finds that picking up the dry cleaning was less of a chore when done on ground Ben Franklin and John Adams trod before her; and Roxane Farmanfarmaian escaped revolutionary Iran for springtime in Paris. Many of the original pieces are wordy, mired in mundaneness, and lacking forceful editing by journalist Rowlands (A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and Her Life in Fashion, Arts and Letters), But overall this book should strike a chord in those harboring love/hate relationships with Paris and Parisians.

November 1, 2010

Design writer Rowlands (A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and Her Life in Fashion, Art, and Letters) here returns to the city to which she sailed in her twenties to live the intriguing life she'd seen in French films. Many of the writers in this anthology moved to Paris to work or study, drawn by the culture, history, architecture, and romance. But the gorgeous light, the art and theater, and the beauty of the skyline were not always compensation for the humiliation, indifference, hostility, and loneliness these writers encountered in this city with a past. Edmund White describes it as a "mild hell so comfortable that it resembles heaven." Others find it sinister, melancholy, and full of contradictions. Featured are writers from diverse backgrounds and nationalities and such well-known authors as David Sedaris, Joe Queenan, and Diane Johnson. VERDICT Not a guidebook to the Paris that most travelers see, this compilation provides an honest view into Parisian life for an outsider. Absorbing reading; essential for anyone thinking of living in la Ville-Lumiere.--Melissa Stearns, Franklin Pierce Univ. Lib., Rindge, NH

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2011
Rowlands compiles into one volume 32 works, about half of which have never been seen before, by different writers who relay their experiences of living in Paris. Although the contributors are as mixed a bag as the City of Lights 20 arrondissements, they report universal similarities: In Paris, the customer is, if ever, only rarely right. The citys taunting, melancholy beauty is unsurpassed. And any moment passed in the Luxembourg Gardens can be considered time well spent. Rowlands does a seamless job of presenting a city as seen by so many eyes (those of David Sedaris, Stacey Schiff, and Zo' Vald's, to name a few) that readers whove visited will recognize their own memories, and those who havent will glean a globally in-depth portrait. (The piece by a Parisian single-mom, blogging about her homelessness, is particularly poignant.) Judith Thurman perhaps sums up the whole endeavor best when she writes that one of the greatest charms of having lived in Paris is the Proustian glamour of being able to claim that one did so.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)