Top Ten Tuesday: Books Set in Paris

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week is a freebie topic.

A couple of months ago, I did a TTT post all about books set in places I would like to visit. The surprising thing was that there were no books set in Paris on that list, but there as a reason for that. I already knew that for this freebie topic I was going to combine Top Ten Tuesday with Paris In July and feature books I've read set in Paris.

Die for Me and Until I Die by Amy Plum - These are the first two books in a YA paranormal series set in Paris. This is one of those cases where the cover gods smile on an author not once or twice. I did enjoy the books but haven't read any more.

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins - This is another YA book but no vampires or werewolves in sight. In this book a young girl moves to Paris to go to school. A while ago someone on a TTT post mentioned that there is going to be a special edition cover so I just had to buy it.

For the King by Catherine Delors - I read this book years ago and enjoyed it. It is set in Paris when a police inspector must investigate a failed assassination attempt against Napoleon.

Paris, My Sweet by Amy Thomas - A New York girl moves to Paris for a year and goes on the hunt for the perfect dessert! This is one book that made me yearn to go to Paris.

The Chocolate Kiss by  Laura Florand (or really any of her books)- I mentioned The Chocolate Thief last week, but all of her books are set in France and often feature lots of food. If you like a bit of romance featuring hot French guys with delicious food, this is an author for you!

French Milk by Lucy Knisley - This is a graphic novel about a young woman's trip to Paris with her mother. It's not my favourite Lucy Knisley book but it did make me want to visit. Then again, you're possibly noticing that is a theme for all the books in this post!

The Little Bookshop on the Seine by Rebecca Raisin - A bookseller swaps her life in small town America for a busy bookshop in Paris. This was my first novel by Rebecca Raisin, but I have read another couple since, and will read more.

Almost Paris by Sarah Turnbull - An Australian woman makes an implulsive decision to move to Paris to live with the French man she has just met. This book explores the cultural differences that she encountered. (review here)

The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B by Sandra Gulland - Sandra Gulland has written a number of historical fiction novels set in France. This is the first in the trilogy focussing on the life of Josephine Bonaparte.(review here)

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - I am not sure what I need to say about this book other than it is a story of the French revolution.

Melbourne Writers Festival: Enquire Within (Saturday)

I came home pretty tired from my Friday at Melbourne Writers Festival, but there was no time to sleep in and recover on Saturday as I was off to another full day of books and author goodness!

Sarah Turnbull, Jesse Blackadder, Ali Cobby Eckerman and
hot chocolate in a jar

Bree and I headed into the city early so that we could attend the free Morning Read session. These sessions are hour long and feature four authors who each read a portion from their books. Before I start on the post proper I thought I would mention how much I love that there are quite a lot of free events throughout the festival. Some of them might be a bit more obscure and not always the big name authors but if you don't have a lot of money you can still pretty much fill up a day with events, particularly on the weekends.

The Morning Read session we attended featured only one author that I had read before and that was Sarah Turnbull. The other three authors who read this morning were Jesse Blackadder, Teju Cole and Ali Cobby Eckerman. It is testament to the power of listening to an author tell even just a small part of their story that I was on the library website requesting the books of all of these authors. Only one of them was not available.

The next session for me was History's Script which was hosted by Michael Cathcart from Books and Art Daily on Radio National and featured Sarah Dunant and Jane Sullivan, author of Little People. I really enjoyed the session I attended on Friday where Sarah Dunant spoke so well about Lucrezia Borgia so I was extremely glad that I had the foresight to book into another session with her during the Festival. This session was also recorded for the Books and Arts Daily show and will be played on Tuesday. If I remember I will post the link so that if you are interested you can listen to the session yourself.

The host started by asking each of the authors how they came to history. For Sarah, it started in childhood reading authors like Jean Plaidy, Margaret Irwin and Anya Seton amongst others. Living in post war Britain, historical fiction was a gateway to a far more colourful, more exotic and romantic past and she became obsessed with history. That romanticised view of history was beaten out of her when she went to study history at Cambridge University for three years. It was interesting at Cambridge to see how men and women come to an interest in history differently, something that is often reflected in the way male and female readers come to historical fiction.

Sarah Dunant

Sarah Dunant came to a love of Renaissance History a lot later, it not having been a part of history that she had studied previously and therefore been deromanticised from (my made up word, not hers). Her interest in Renaissance history was piqued when she found herself living in Florence in the early 2000s. Florence is a city where the history is literally everywhere, rich with the past. This had Dunant wondering exactly what it was that happened 500 years ago that turned Florence into a cauldron of change. Even at the time, Florentines were proud of the history that was happening, of the art and more.

For Jane Sullivan, her love of history came through the literature of Tennyson and  Keats, or stories like Jane Eyre rather than through history itself. In fact, the thing that she remembers most about history from school is the cartoons that were in the history books. Jane is originally from the UK. When she did come to Australia she was struck by the way the cities must have been new, particularly a city like Melbourne which benefited from the gold rush and was at one point called the Chicago of the South because of how quickly it was growing up. She sees Melbourne as a city full of stories - not unlike Florence for Sarah.

One of those stories was how she came across the characters that were to people her book, Little People. She first found reference to a travelling show of dwarf performers when she was reading a book about poet Ada Cambridge.  When the troop of performers were in town, they were feted as rock stars, causing big traffic problems wherever they went. I should also mention that as Jane Sullivan was talking about how she found these characters there were images of them flashing up on the screen which was really cool.

Sarah Dunant's book In the Company of the Courtesan also has a dwarf as one of it's main characters and she shared how she actually found her dwarf in a painting. She knew that courtesans of the day often kept little people as exotic pets and so her main character was born. The moderator noted that often looking at people on the margins help define the centre or norms of a situation. Dunant agreed that this was the case for her book as Bucino was also able to be the eyes and the ears for the courtesan and so was able to expand what the reader could see. For Jane Sullivan, her narrator was a normal sized person but still was in that role of outsider given that all the other members of the troop are little people.

The discussion then moved onto a discussion of what writing historical fiction enables you to do that straight history or narrative non-fiction does not. The first response was around limits of information available, especially seeing as sometimes there can be constructed or controlled history, such as in the case of the travelling troop given that P T Barnum was basically a spin doctor trying to entice the crowds in to the show. It also enables you to make up stuff that is still consistent with what you know.

For Sarah, the narrative comes first from history and then there is the story. History is rich and complex and you need to get the complexities which is sometimes difficult when you are going back 500 or more years. Sometimes you can find hidden bits of history - particularly in relation to women - but not necessarily the full story. For some of her earlier books, she sees it as putting the soil in place from what you know (for example, food, religion or culture) and then build the characters from there. It was different for Blood and Beauty because she had a known person from history as her main character rather than a made up characters, and in the Borgias case we believe that we know their history. She went onto touch on a couple of the issues that I mentioned in my post yesterday about the slander of Lucrezia Borgia's reputation.

Jane Sullivan

In a discussion on truth  Jane Sullivan mentioned that there are 2 different types of truth. One is of fact - what is learned from research etc and the second is the truth of fiction where you try to create characters who are consistent, interesting and recognisable. This idea of historical truth is also embodied in the fact that historians will select from the various bits of evidence they have available to them to decide what is true, but it is just is likely that what they don't have will actually be the final truth. Novelists use this selection process when building their character but what they are aiming for is to be true to the grand narrative of history but bring them alive through characters and stories.

One of the interesting questions that was addressed during the session was the idea of history repeating itself. While the world moves forward technologically, the fundamentals remain the same. For example, when you are writing about the Renaissance you are talking about the rise of fundamental Christianity and many of today's world conflicts are born out of religious fundamentalism too. Nothing changes in the big roll of history - the hows might change but the big issues tend to be repetitive. The how is where authors needs to be careful because there are fundamental differences. The example given was about pain. Because we have easy access to pain relief our understanding of pain may well be completely different to someone from a couple of hundred years ago. While there are differences, Sarah Dunant pointed out that if you sink yourself in the past you can often find the similarities, but it doesn't necessarily work the other way around. No matter what you write though, your writing is informed by how you are now.

Throughout the rest of the conversation there were thoughts about whether fantasy is displacing historical fiction, particularly with things like Game of Thrones where it is fantasy strongly rooted in actual history, about the importance of afterwords in helping the reader understand which parts of the story were made up, about the difference between male and female gateways into historical fiction (apparently Hilary Mantel has made historical fiction something that men are more likely to read ..who knew!), about the idea of a historical fiction canon (suggested authors to include were Rosemary Sutcliff, Mary Renault, Rose Tremain and Umberto Ecco with the caveat that he is more imaginative than research driven), and about choosing real people as your central characters rather than making them up.

There was so much more that was talked about. Hopefully you might be interested enough to listen to the program when I add the link to the post at some point this week. There were times where I felt that the moderator was displaying a dislike (maybe too strong a word but there was something there) of the genre, so I might give it a listen to see if that comes through in the program too, and to see what I missed as I was madly scrambling away taking notes. You can read Bree's take on this session here.

Whilst I still have at least one more session to attend it will have to be pretty special to displace the sessions I have attended with Sarah Dunant. The Lucrezia Borgia session was absolutely fascinating and this discussion with Jane Sullivan was also very interesting.

After a couple of hours break and a brief catch up with Lisa from ANZ Litlovers it was time for my next session of the day which was At Home in the World featuring Sarah Turnbull and Brendon Shanahan. Whilst I have read Almost French by Sarah Turnbull and have All Good Things out from the library at the moment, Brendon Shanahan was completely new to me. I did briefly contemplate taking the library book to get signed by the author but decided against it in the end. One of the interesting things about this session for me was the fact that Sarah and Brendon were often coming from different perspectives, which I guess is born out of the fact that we all decide to do things for different reasons. The moderator set out saying that he wanted to touch on the ideas of place, home and belonging which I think he was mostly successful in achieving.

Sarah Turnbull

Both Sarah and Brendan have lived, or do live, in iconic places. For Sarah, she went from Sydney to Paris and then to Tahiti. Sarah started off by saying that no one moves countries for no reason. There were reasons for moving to paradise to do with her husbands work, but no place - no matter how beautiful - transcends real life because life is always complicated. The idea of living in picture perfect places is an illusion because it doesn't always have much of an impact after a while. Her books reflect the idea of being outsiders in these glamorous locations, although Paris is often more gritty than people expect. In Almost French, she was writing about the experience of being the outsider as she moves to the city to be with her husband, but in her second book, All Good Things, both of them are the outsiders as they move to the island and have to try and fit in and make friends with the locals, knowing that they would be leaving again in a couple of years. Later in the session talked about one of the motivations that people often have for moving from place to place is the idea of rejuvenation and fresh starts which I found interesting.

Brendan then proceeded to say that he moved to Las Vegas for no reason - he basically bought a house in Las Vegas on the internet without even seeing it and then moved there two weeks later. He moved there with no romantic notions of Las Vegas because it too can be pretty gritty but it was great to discover that there was a cool core community there particularly over the last couple of years when the housing downturn has caused the population to be less transient that the people who come and go from Las Vegas normally are. Where Sarah talked about trying to be part of a community, Brendan loves the fact that in Las Vegas if you want to escape from your past you can, and if you want to keep to yourself that's okay too.

There was a discussion about developing super senses when you travel, particularly in relation to the behaviour of Australians, particularly as you come back home, our over regulation whether it be in relation to formal or informal rules of behaviour was one thing that was discussed. At one point the phrase the Swiss of the Pacific was used to label us as a country

You can become immune to the things around you particularly when you see the bizarre all the time as you do in Las Vegas. Brendan sometimes has to remind himself to look for the unusual, but for Sarah she never took Paris for granted and grew to appreciate the beauty of the island the longer that she stayed, mainly because her initial reaction to arriving was along the lines of "what on earth have we done!"

Brendan Shanahan

The differences between the two authors continued to be explored when talking about their types of books. Both are journalists by trade but Sarah's books, especially All Good Things,  are more personal stories. She certainly wasn't setting out to debunk the paradise myth but there were things that she found very difficult about living there. Brendan's style is more observational in style.

Both agreed that you learned to appreciate Australia more through travel and that you notice changes. It is sometimes difficult to tell if there really have been large changes or if you have just noticed things now because of how travelling has broadened your horizons.

In the closing part of the session, the two authors talked about the idea of writing down a true story, touching on things like the changing of names and about how it is impossible to write a memoir with the intention of not offending anyone. It was also interesting to hear them talk about how trying to write down truth with the aim of creating a story is quite difficult because it is quite an artificial process, but by going through that process you can often discern quite powerful truths.

One of the reasons I chose this session is because I have done the travelling and coming home thing myself, dealing with all the pros and cons that are on both sides of that equation. There was one thing that was said right at the end of the session which really resonated for me. To paraphrase:

Sooner or later, you long for that one place that you don't have to explain yourself.

For Sarah, the place which she is describing is here but for her husband it is France. For me, it is definitely a feeling that I related to, that desire for home and belonging no matter how much I enjoyed my time in the UK.

I still have Sunday's sessions to write up, which I will probably do later in the week!

Almost French by Sarah Turnbull

Unlike a lot of us, including those of us that participate in the Paris In July event, freelance journalist Sarah Turnbull wasn’t all that desperate to visit France when she was spending a year backpacking through Europe back in the mid 90s. She was mainly spending her time in the eastern European countries. In her travels, she meets a French lawyer named Frederic a couple of times and when he asks her to come and visit him in Paris, she agrees.

What starts out as a week long visit turns into a month long holiday affair and then into more and, after a brief separation while Sarah finishes her travels, she moves to Paris to be with Fred. Moving to a different country requires adjustments for anyone, let alone when there is a different language and very different cultural values involved. For a relatively laid back Aussie, the rules that permeate French society are difficult to understand let alone to follow, and that is before you throw the fact that Sarah needs to learn the language quickly and to find a way to break into the freelance journalism market so that she can start to earn some income. Being a freelance journalist means that she must work from home which is a way that the author is isolated from others, and she must find ways to counteract this loneliness.

Turnbull takes us through some of the well known French clichés but also some of the less well known quirks as well. She writes about the French obsession with food, talking not only of the lunch that she ate in a Michelin star restaurant but also of her joy at eventually moving to an area of Paris where there is still a fresh food market. She tells of starting most days with a café crème at her local café, and attends dinner parties where it is expected that there will be numerous courses and if they aren’t right there will be criticisms made - very different to the barbecue in the backyard that most Australians would be used to.

One of the other things that Turnbull talk about included fashion, and the way that seeing seeing how the French dress influenced her to dress better. At one point, she and Frederic had a conversation about how no French person would wear their tracksuit pants to the bakery for fear of upsetting the baker. A few days later I thought about how I would manage in France as I just popped down to the shops in my trackydacks, old smelly trainers and jumper! Non, non, non!

Other subjects to be examined include making friends, the French concept of home (wherein Frederic returns to his small town in Normandy on a very regular basis), moving house to a fabulous sounding apartment in central Paris and the joy of living in the beautiful city but also the issues that brings, Frederic's first visit to Australia and more. All of the anecdotes are told with humour and with a candour that at times can verge on harsh (for example when she talks about how difficult it can be to make friends with French women), but I can also definitely imagine. One of the other fun stories was when Sarah and Frederic decide to buy a dog. Sarah is determined that there do Maddie is not going to be a pampered Parisian pooch, but it doesn't take long before Maddie goes everywhere with her and often provides entres into conversation that might not have otherwise existed.

One of the strengths of the book for me was that Turnbull not only observes as an outsider looking at French society but that she was trying to understand so that she could assimilate as much as it would be possible for an Australian moving to France could, especially someone whose partner is French and so she doesn't want to let him down at all. Also, she took the time to compare and contrast the two cultures and the way they approach everyday things like food or the service that they expect in shops or aesthetic beauty whether it be in their own home or in hotel rooms with terrible art on the walls for example.

One of the other things that was quite interesting to me was that Sarah and I were both travelling at around the same time and so there were some key events that were mentioned during the book that I remember quite clearly. For example, when France won the soccer World Cup in 1998, I remember watching the final and then seeing the news reports of the people of Paris celebrating whilst Sarah Turnbull writes about being there. Whereas she ended up living a fabulous life in Paris I ended up living for 5 years in the UK, and I obviously came back to Australia a lot sooner than she did.

While I was living in an English speaking country with a similar culture and so did not face a lot of the same difficulties as she did, I was involved with a Nigerian man whose friends were predominantly other young Nigerian men and so could really relate to the feeling of ostracism that comes with sitting around a table or lounge for a meal and not being able to follow the conversation because it was in another language that you either didn’t know or weren’t fluent in, to having no one make any effort to include you in the conversation, to that feeling of just filling a space rather than being an integral part of the gathering.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book which was narrated by Caroline Lee, who I am almost convinced is pretty much the only female Australian narrator out there. I know that isn’t true, but this is the fourth audiobook that I have listened to this year where she was the narrator, and she also narrates several that I have considered listening to. I did like her narration in this book. I think her voice is more suited to contemporary storytelling, or at least I didn’t like her as much when I was listening to historical novels, particularly ones where there was a wide variety of different accents.
This book was published in the early 2000's and it has taken all this time for a follow up book to be released. I am looking forward to finding out what happens next to Frederic and Sarah.


Rating 4/5

Synopsis

A delightful, fresh twist on the travel memoir, Almost French takes us on a tour that is fraught with culture clashes but rife with deadpan humor.

Sarah Turnbull's stint in Paris was only supposed to last a week. Chance had brought Sarah and Frédéric together in Bucharest, and on impulse she decides to take him up on his offer to visit him in the world's most romantic city. Sacrificing Vegemite for vichyssoise, the feisty journalist does her best to fit in, although her conversation, her laugh, and even her wardrobe advertise her foreign status.

But as she navigates the highs and lows of this strange new world, from life in a bustling quartier and surviving Parisian dinner parties to covering haute couture fashion shows and discovering the paradoxes of French culture, little by little Sarah falls under its spell: maddening, mysterious, and charged with that French specialty—seduction.

I read this book for following challenges/events: