Goodbye, Paris

Goodbye, Paris by Anstey Harris

"Paris is, as my late father used to say, where I left it. The city doesn't know that anything has changed. In the same way it always has, this city accepts me just the way I am. In return, I love it back. "

Grace Atherton once dreamed of being a concert cellist. She had the talent and the drive, but after quitting music college twenty years ago, she hasn't played the cello since. Grace's present life revolves around her music shop where she makes and restores violins and cellos. The other constant in her life his her (married) partner David. The rhythm of Grace's life stops following an incident in Paris. With the help of her shop assistant Nadia and a delightful customer Mr. Williams, Grace is finally able to play the cello again and compose a new musical score for her life.

La Proie du Chat

La Proie du Chat (What the Cat Dragged In) a collection of short stories by Patricia Highsmith. I read these short stories in French and until now I was unfamiliar with American author Patricia Highsmith. Like the cat in the first short story, Highsmith nonchalantly introduces an element of mystery, horror, or violence into the most banal of experiences.

Sea Prayer

Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini and illustrated by Dan Williams

Sea Prayer is just that--a prayer, a memory, a lamentation, and a cry for help. On a moonlit night, a father holds his sleeping son Marwan on the beach. He describes his own childhood in  the bustling city of Homs, his grandfather's house, olive trees, and more. When the sun rises, the father and his son, along with countless others, will board a boat bound for the "safety" of Europe and beyond.



"Afghans and Somalis and Iraqis and Eritreans and Syrians.
All of us impatient for sunrise,
all of us in dread of it.
All of us in search of home.

I have heard it said we are the uninvited.
We are the unwelcome.
We should take our misfortune elsewhere.

But I hear your mother's voice,
over the tide,
and she whispers in my ear,
'Oh, but if they saw, my darling.
Even half of what you have.
If they only saw.
They would say kinder things, surely."

Marwan's father can do nothing but pray or the safe passage of this most-precious cargo.

Sea Prayer was inspired by the story of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian regugee who drowned in teh Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe in 2015. The book is dedicated to the thousands of refugees who have perished at sea trying to reach safety. Hosseini will donate author proceeds from this book to UNHCR, the UN Relief Agency, and to The Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help  fund relief efforts for refugees around the world.

Dan William's paintings are beautiful and say as much as Hosseini's words.

The Best Loved Villages of France

The Best Loved Villages of France by Stéphane Bern

Every village in France is special and no doubt every villageois/villageoise has his/her favorite as does each visitor. In 2012-2013, France 2 Television aired a program called Le Village Préféré des Français which was extremely popular. In light of the show's popularity, Bern spent the next two years criss-crossing France to select 44 towns that were representative of all regions and local flavors of France. Bern's book is an homage to village life--the slower pace, timeless rituals, deep history, favorite dishes, and land.
I enjoyed reading about these villages and planning several visits to France to enjoy these national treasures. Here are my favorites:

1. Eguisheim
2. Riquewihr
3. Beynac-et-Cazenac
4. Flavigny-sur-Ozerain
5. Vézelay
6. Saint-Amand-sur-Fion
7. Baume-les-Messieurs
8. Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert
9. Rodemack
10. Conques
11. Saint-Cirq-Lapopie
12. Pérouges

The Lost Vintage

The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah

Les gouttes d'or (Drops of Gold) is the name of the wine grown in Burgundy by Kate's family for centuries. Viticulture runs deep in Kate's blood, but the love of the family's terroir in France does not. Kate is a Sommelier in San Francisco and is studying for the Master of Wine exam. She has not set foot in France or on her family's vineyard for over a decade. Nevertheless, that is where she finds herself. Kate agrees to help her cousin Nico and his wife Heather with les vendages (annual grape harvest) and brush up on her knowledge. What she doesn't expect to find is a secret stash of wine hidden by her relatives during World War Two, a suitcase, clothes, and photos of an aunt she never knew Helene Marie Charpin. Although a pamphlet from the French Resistance is found in the cave, the family's reticence to speak of Helene and other information learned about her suggests that the line between cooperation, collaboration, and resistance was thin. Kate sets out to discover the truth about her family's actions in Vichy France and who they aided.

Mah's novel is a loving portrait of the Cotes d'Or region of Burgundy, the towns of Beaune and Meursault, and the river Bouzaize. Kate and her family are fictional, but Helene Marie Charpin and the family's experiences in Nazi-Occupied France were based in part on Resistance by Agnes Humbert, A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead, A Cool and Lonely Courage by Susan Ottaway and Resistance and Betrayal by Patrick Marnham. The characters are well-done and I felt strongly about all of them--either loved them or hated them. My feelings about the characters made the novel all the more compelling and believable. I read The Lost Vintage in one afternoon. Best enjoyed with your favorite beverage and some French cheese.

http://museedelaresistanceenligne.org/

Monet's Table: The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet

Monet's Table: The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet text by Claire Joyes and Photographs by Jean-Bernard Naudin

My favorite artist is Claude Monet and my favorite place to visit in France is Monet's home, studio, and gardens at Giverny. I far prefer to stroll about the gardens (despite the fact they are overrun with tourists) than to walk through Monet's little pink house. But, I do remember looking at Monet's yellow kitchen on previous visits to Giverny and Jean-Bernard Naudin's photographs bring it all back.

Monet was a foodie and had a hearty appetite. When guests came to Giverny, which was frequently, they were treated to lavish meals. Family meals were often special as well, even on a daily basis. His dining preferences reflect the over-indulgence typical of the French middle-class in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. Monet's taste in food developed alongside his art at Giverny where he settled in 1883. Monet and his second wife Alice created their own style. "Their sole culinary ambition was to serve beautifully prepared dishes using whatever the kitchen-garden or the farmyard could supply. This was their food, homemade but often making use of recipes invented by the great restaurants they patronized, or even dished created by their friends, who included writers, art collectors, painters and actors" (19). For example, Cézanne provided the recipe for Boullabaisse de mourue (Salt cod soup), the Tatin Sisters themselves shared their recipe for their namesake upside-down cake, Tarte Tatin, with Monet and his family, and Mallarmé passed on his Recette de girolles (Recipe for chanterelles). Chef Joel Robuchon has tested and adapted the recipes found in Monet's cooking journals and you can make them yourself.

The kitchen-garden was a beautiful and well-tended as the flower garden. However, aesthetics that were favored among the flowers were banned among the vegetables. In the kitchen-garden, "there was a strict geometrical plan and paths were laid out in straight lines, to allow the work to be carried out logically, rapidly, and with minimum effort" (44).

Monet's blue kitchen:

The yellow dining room (I want dishes like these)

Monet's Luncheon on the Grass (1865-66)

When Paris Sizzled

My latest read, and a great one, was When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends by Mary McAuliffe

McAuliffe's books primarily explores the Parisian cultural, artistic and social scenes, with forays into politics and economics, during the decade following World War I. The Roaring Twenties or les Années folles, spanned the precarious peace in November 1918 to the crash on Wall Street in late October of 1929. The Crazy Years ushered in changes in art, literature, music, fashion, architecture, transportation and behavior. France suffered terrible loses in the war, one and a half million dead and almost three million wounded, the first order of business was to move on from the atrocities of war. Frenchmen and expats alike drowned their sorrows in alcohol and danced their cares away, in the bars and clubs of Montmartre, but especially in Montparnasse where Kiki reigned as Queen. Pleasure, excess, and hedonism contrasted with others' daily struggles.

The cast of characters in McAuliffe's chronicle is large: Monet, Le Corbusier, Chanel, Hemingway, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, Citroen, Renault, Picasso, Andre Breton, Serge Diaghilev, Maurice Ravel, and many more. Their boundless creativity was matched only by a desire to upset tradition and order, tensions that would escalate over the course of the decade.

Eventually the bubble burst. The crash of 1929 did not have immediate effects in France. But, eventually the American and British tourists ran out of money to spend and settled in less expensive areas or returned home.  "Wherever they landed, they brought with them memories of a decade that, in hindsight, appeared gloriously carefeee and joyous, whether viewed as an amusing alcohol-fueled escapade or as a kind of Camelot. In memory, les Années folles sizzled and glowed, to the accompaniment of an isistent jazz beat" (271). However, much of the memory of the Crazy Years was exaggerated or distorted--a darkness always lurked next to the sparkle and sequins.

Happy New Year

The New Year means new books, new authors, and new reading goals, but also rediscovering and enjoying old favorites. Today I picked up a short little book called Clues to Christie: An Introductory Guide to Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence and all of Agatha Christie's Mysteries. At only 127 pages, that is a lot of ground to cover and indeed it really is an introduction. I didn't learn anything new about Christie, except that she is quite the playwright as well as novelist. So often fans read her books according to the detective that is featured. Here, her novels were presented in this "traditional" manner, but also in different categories. Death by Strangulation: examples include The Clocks, Nemesis, Sleeping Murder; Death by Poison: The Clocks, Five Little Pigs, After the Funeral; Death by Nursery Rhyme: And Then There Were None, By the Pricking of my Thumbs, Five Little Pigs, Hickory Dickory Dock; or Death by the Seven Deadly Sins: The A.B.C. Murders (Pride), Five Little Pigs (anger), At Bertram's Hotel (Gluttony), Evil Under the Sun (lust), A Murder is Announced (envy), A Pocketful of Rye (sloth), and Death on the Nile (greed).