“No One Speaks English in Paris.” Well, Not Exactly

Our hotel in Amsterdam had arranged our transportation to the train station. It wasn’t far, but traffic was congested. Once there, we boarded the Thalys, the high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris with a single stop in Brussels (it’s now called the Eurostar). 

My wife had taken French in high school and college, but I think we were both slightly apprehensive about Paris. I’d been told that no one in Paris spoke English except English-speaking tourists, “and if even if a French person does, they’ll never admit it and just stare at you with a blank look.” I’d also been told, “They don’t like Americans.”

 

I would learn a French word, or, more precisely, a phrase. It would get branded on my brain the entire time we were in Paris.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: the Louvre at night, via Unsplash.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Tipping Your Kayak – poem by Sarah Chestnut at The Rabbit Room.

 

Poetry as Reclamation – Huma Sheikh at Writer’s Digest.

 

Soft words – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Nightwind,” poem by John Clare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Sharing the Grail – poem by David Whyte.

 

“There Will Be Stars,” poem by Sara Teasdale – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Michelle Ortega and “When You Ask Me, Why Paris?”

We were there for an anniversary trip – Paris in the springtime. It’s a beautiful city, but it has its quirks. The museum workers were staging wildcat strikes to protest government pension changes. The government didn’t care. The tourists did. The Louvre and other cultural institutions might or might not be open, and they might suddenly close when they were open (this happened to Versailles the day after we visited). Our hotel concierge did his best to keep guests informed, but there was no way to tell for sure until you arrived. 

What the wildcat strikes taught us to do was to be flexible in the extreme. We discovered the Museum of the Middle Ages (“the Cluny”), with its famous “lady and the unicorn” tapestry. The Rue des Martyrs was three blocks from our hotel, and it was like a miniature of every Paris stereotype – the bakery, the coffee shop, the flower shop, the wine shop, people doing their shopping with baguettes in their arms. The Au Petite Riche restaurant with its surly French waiters quarantined us in a side room with two other couples – an elderly couple from Salisbury in England and a honeymooning pair from Australia. They probably thought they were isolating their French diners from the boorish Anglos; instead, they turned our meal into a party and a treasured memory.

 

Poet Michelle Ortega has had a different Paris experience, or at least what she writes about in When You Ask Me, Why Paris? reflects a different experience. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Things We Leave Unsaid – poem by Andrew Calis at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“The Soote Season,” poem by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poems on Solitude and Aloneness – D.H. Lawrence via Poetic Outlaws.

 

“Straws in the Wind,” poem by Gerald Dawe – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Crystal Downing’s Subversive Sayers and 21^st Century Society – Seth Myers at An Unexpected Journal.

"Magic Mirror" by Georgia Lee Maxwell

Georgia Lee Maxwell is a society reporter for a small newspaper in the Florida Panhandle. Blamed some mixed-up type (which suggested a criminal attended a society “do” as an honored guest), she quits her job and makes a rather abrupt change. She moves to Paris.

 

She’s scraped together freelancing jobs, and then a friend asks her to substitute for an interview with an art restorer. They arrived at the small, family-endowed museum, and are barely in the door when masked gunman break in, force Georgia Lee, the art restorer, and the museum director to lie on the floor, and kill the security guard. They steal one of the museum’s less-valuable objects – a piece of black obsidian known and the mirror of Nostradamus. 

 

Georgia Lee is determined to pursue the story; after all, she was something of an eyewitness to the crime. She attends press briefings, she interviews witnesses, and she follows people she thinks might be suspects. And she soon finds herself involved in an offer to pay for the mirror, second murder, a second murder, being considered both a suspect and an assistant to the police, and a kidnapping – her own.

 

Michaela Thompson

Magic Mirror by Michaela Thompson was originally published in 1988, when the author used the pen name of Mickey Friedman, and republished in 2013. It’s now available in eBook format.  It’s the first of two Georgia Lee Maxwell mysteries, the second being A Temporary Ghost.

 

In addition to the Georgia Lee Maxwell mysteries, Thompson also wrote five other mystery novels. She grew up on the northwest Florida Gulf Coast. She worked as a newspaper reporter and freelance journalist, and she’s contributed short stories to a number of anthologies. She lives in New York City. 

If you like reding about Paris, and an American moving to Paris, this is a mystery story to enjoy. It’s occasionally tongue-in-cheek, and the story of the mirror gets a bit complicated, but it’s an enjoyable story. And having been first published in 1988, there are no mobiles phones, internet, or social media.

“Paris Time Capsule” by Ella Carey

In 2010, an apartment in Paris was unlocked for the first time since 1966. It was included in the will of the granddaughter of the woman, Marthe de Florian, who originally owned it. The apartment included two surprises – an original painting of de Florian by Giovanni Boldini, and the furnishings, which were largely unchanged from the early 1900s.  

The apartment and what it contained were almost a perfect time capsule of the Belle Epoque, the 15 to 20 years before the start of World War I.  De Florian was a demimondaine who famous lovers included Georges Clemenceau, a prime minister of France. While she had been largely forgotten by history, the discovery of the apartment brought a spotlight to her life and times. 

 

Author Ella Carey was inspired by the story to write Paris Time Capsule, using the De Florian discovery as the basis for her story but changing some key facts. 

 

Catherine, or Cat, Jordan receives a letter from an attorney in Paris. Included with the letter is a key. The young New York City photographer discovers she has been left a legacy in a will of a woman she’s never met. The legacy is a Paris apartment. 

 

Once she arrives in Paris, Cat discovers the apartment has not been opened in more than 70 years. She explores the musty, cobwebby apartment, accompanied by Loic Archer, the grandson of the woman whose will left the apartment to Cat. 

 

Several mysteries need to be solved. Why did the apartment remained locked for 70 years? Why did Loic’s grandmother, the daughter of Marthe de Florian, make Cat the heir to the apartment? And why was the apartment abandoned intact in the first place? The answers take Cat and Loic to southern France and back to Paris. And along the way, Cat, engaged to a young establishment merchant banker in New York, finds she’s losing her heart to Loic.

 

Ella Carey

Ella Carey is the author of several historical novels. Paris Time Capsule is the first of three books in the Secrets of Paris trilogy, followed by The House by the Lake and From a Paris Balcony. She’s also the author of Secret Shores, Beyond the Horizon, The Things We Don’t Say, and the recently published A New York Secret. She lives with her family in Melbourne, Australia.

 

Paris Time Capsule is a mystery, a historical romance, and a contemporary love story, all wrapped into one hard-to-put-down novel.

 

Top photograph: Marthe de Florian, oil on canvas by Giovanni Boldini, via Wikimedia Commons. This was the painting discovered when the Paris apartment was unlocked in 2010.

Interior darkness: May 1999 and April 2019

Interior darkness is

what I remember most,

a soft darkness, mellowed

by centuries, a friendly

mystery to wrap myself in

as I walked through wood

and stone. Candles, lit

in supplication all over.

Lots of people, speaking

a babble of tongues, usually

looking up and pointing

to the darkness clustered 

on the ceiling.

The darkness remained,

though, until I turned

and saw the window,

a rose of glorious colors

even without direct sun.

I saw the rose again,

twenty years later

almost to the day, but

this time a view from

the outside, and the rose

backlit by yellow-orange

light. I thought again

of that older darkness,

now dispelled for a moment

at least, and I wished 

I could have had
the darkness back.

Photograph of Notre Dame du Paris Cathedral by Daniele D’Andreti via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Paris in the Present Tense” by Mark Helprin

I’ve fallen in love with another novel set in France and written by an American author. The first was Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. The second is Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin.

Jules Lacour is a cello maître at a Paris university. He’s 74 but looks 50, and keeps in excellent physical shape by swimming, rowing on the Seine, and running. His beloved wife Jaqueline died some years before; his daughter Catherine is married and he has a young grandson, Luc. To look at Jules, one would see a man who is tall and looks German or Scandinavian, perhaps Dutch. In fact, Jules is Jewish, born in 1940 shortly after his parents, fleeing Paris, went into hiding in Reims. His first four years were spent in silence and whispers. He survived the Nazi occupation; his parents did not.

The story of Jules’ early life does an almost reverse image of itself with the lives of his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. The grandson has leukemia, and no one in the family has sufficient funds to move to better medical centers in Switzerland or the United States. A young boy survived the early 1940s; a young boy may not survive contemporary times. Jules is willing to do just about anything to find the funds for Luc, even stooping to writing a jingle for an American insurance company.

Overlaying this story of the Lacour family is contemporary Paris. It is not the Nazi occupation all over again, but it is an increasingly dangerous time to be Jewish. His son-in-law no longer wears his yarmulke in public; he was attacked once, and a yarmulke is an advertisement for the city’s increasingly militant and violent Muslims. 

One night, on his way home from a pleasant dinner with his best friend, Jules becomes involved in an act of violence, shocking himself as much as the others engaged. And from that moment, everything will change. Jules will do things he never dreamed of; he will also find himself falling in love with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. 

Mark Helprin

Paris in the Present Tense is an enthralling story, but it is the language of the story and how it shapes the story, and how intimately and beautifully the language is tied to music, that makes this novel a standout.

Helprin is the author of several novels, including A Soldier of the Great War, Winter’s Tale, In Sunlight and Shadow, Refiner’s Fire, Freddy and Frederika, and Memoir from Antproof Case; several short story collections; children’s stories (with Chris Van Allburg of The Polar Expressfame); and non-fiction works. Educated at Oxford, Harvard, and Princeton, he served in the Israeli army and air force and the British Merchant Navy. He lives in Virginia. 

Paris in the Present Tense is a beautiful, moving story. It’s about music and love. It’s about anti-Semitism. It’s about how the past shapes and often directs the present and the future. And it’s about the courage and standing up for what one believes in.

Top photograph by Aurelien Lemasson Theobald via Unsplash. User with permission.

“A Friend in Paris” by Jennie Goutet

April Caleigh is an American who has moved to Paris to pursue painting. The daughter of a well-known painter who died some time before, April is determined to become an artist. Carefully managing her limited income, she’s living in a small room in a Paris apartment house while she attends art school. The room and the location fit her needs exactly, except for the boorish and vaguely threatening grandson of her landlord. 

Victor Deschamps lives in the apartment house. Although young, he’s already a successful investor and merger-and-acquisitions expert. He’s also at something of a loss with his relationships. The woman he thought he loved left him for a short trip to Monaco that turned into a year-long absence. He’s preparing to end the relationship with a current girlfriend. And then he meets April, who brings out all of his protectiveness, which turns out to be helpful when the landlord’s grandson becomes more than vaguely threatening.

Jennie Goutet

A romance seems in the offing, until Victor’s old love returns from Monaco, with a baby in tow whom she says is Victor’s. 

A Friend in Paris by Jennie Goutet is the story of April and Victor. It’s a story about love, friendship, romance, art, and, of course, Paris. Most of all, it’s a story about two people who become friends, each of whom is looking for more, but both aware of the complicating factors that make a romantic relationship look impossible.

American-born Goutet specializes in contemporary romances without gratuitous sex – or what would be called a “clean romance.” She’s written one other novel set in Paris – A Noble Affair. She’s also the author of the upcoming novel A Regrettable Proposal, set in Regency England. She and her family live on a small town near Paris.

A Friend in Paris is a sweet story, filled with solid characterization (even the minor characters stand out), elements of danger and suspense that help move the action moving forward, and memorable scenes that linger in the reader’s mind. 

“Out of Sorts” by Aurelie Valognes

Ferdinand Brun is a rather miserable old man. He’s 83; his younger wife left him for the mailman; his daughter moved to Singapore with his grandson. He lives in a Paris apartment house, monitored closely by the apartment manager and surrounded by other residents who would like nothing better than to drive him away and preferably into a retirement home where he’ll be even more miserable.

His one joy in life is his Great Dane, Daisy. That is, she’s his one joy until she’s killed, apparently by an automobile. Ferdinand decides to join her; what else does he have to live for? And so, he steps in front of a bus – and wakes up in the hospital with only minor injuries. Life is so miserable it won’t even allow Ferdinand to leave it.

He begins to plan his suicide again, when he’s interrupted by the arrival of a new family, including a baby who cries at night and a schoolgirl named Juliette who decides to take Ferdinand on as a kind of project of redemption. She’s remarkably insightful and smart, and she doesn’t put up with any of his usual guff. And one of the residents, a widow even older than Ferdinand, begins to smother him with kindness.

Very slowly, Ferdinand begins to discover that life may not be so miserable after all.

Aurelie Valognes

Out of Sortsis a novel by French writer Aurelie Valognes. The book was published in 2016 and helped catapult Valognes into the top ranks of French popular fiction. Her second novel, Will You Ever Change?, was published in 2017 and sold more than 600,000 copies in France.

Valognes was born and raised near Paris. She studied management and worked for a number of American companies as a brand manager. When she and her husband moved to Italy for an international assignment, she began to write fiction, and Out of Sortswas the result. She and her family live in Milan. 

Translated from the French by Wendeline A. Hardenberg, Out of Sortsis funny, sad, and often moving. These characters may be French and Parisians, but it’s easy to see ourselves in their plots and prejudices. The novel is an entertaining, insightful read.

Photograph by Alessio Lin via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“The Silent Boy” by Andrew Taylor

It is Paris, in the very early days of the French Revolution. The Tuileries Palace has just been stormed; blood is running in the streets; and people are being brutally attacked and murdered all over the city. A boy, about 10 years old, is running through the crowds and the mobs. No one pays attention to the blood on his clothes; everyone’s clothing seems smeared with blood. He makes his way across the Seine and finds the house of an old servant. She soon brings him to the Count de Quillon, somewhat barricaded within his own compound but making plans to flee.

The boy, Charles, doesn’t speak. His muteness frustrates all who come into contact with him. The reader knows that someone has told him not to say a word, and never to speak of what has happened. What all assume is that he’s witnessed the death of his mother, who has assumed many names (and lovers) over the past decade but is still the official wife of an Englishman, Edward Savill. Savill and his wife had one child, a daughter named Lizzie, who is now 19, and wants to welcome her new brother.

The count and his entourage, including Charles, make their way from Paris to rural England. The local townspeople are suspicious of the foreigners; the British government is keeping an eye on them – Britain does not want to import the Revolution. And Savill, the boy’s father in name if not in fact, is asked to retrieve the boy from the count and bring him to London.

The Silent Boy by British author Andrew Taylor is gripping, riveting historical fiction. It’s a book that makes a reader put it down several times to relieve the tension created by the story, but pick it up quickly again to see what happens next.

Andrew Taylor

It turns out that Savill isn’t the only one interested in retrieving the boy. And the count wants to hold on to him, claiming Charles is his son. And government interests are somehow involved. And Charles, never speaking but always thinking, trying to take care of himself, and taking advantage of every opportunity to escape and perhaps find his English family.

Taylor is the author of a long list of historical crime and fiction novels, including The Mortal Sickness (1996); The Four Last Things (1997); The Lover of the Grave (1997); The Judgment of Strangers (1998); The Office of the Dead (1998); The Suffocating Night (1999); When Roses Fade (2001); The American Boy (2004); An Unpardonable Crime (2004); Bleeding Heart Square (2009); Anatomy of Ghosts (2012); The Scent of Death (2014); Fireside Gothic (2016); The Ashes of London (2017); and several others. The Silent Boy was published in 2014. He lives near the English-Welsh border in the U.K.

The Silent Boy is an exciting story, filled with details of a period that witnessed so many people, private and public, caught up in the upheaval of the French Revolution.

Illustration: A scene from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.