Clara Reads Proust by Stéphane Carlier - 2022 Translated from the French by Polly MacIntosh - 155 Pages- Paris in July 2024 Novel

 

Paris in July 2024

Paris in July does not just include books. Contributions on your Paris vacation, your favourite meal or restaurant, French movies, music, art, Parisian history and more are very welcome. On the home page for the event you will inevitably discover perhaps new to you authors, movies as well as recipes to send you if you are lucky to Paris or at least the kitchen.

Clara Reads Proust by Stéphane Carlier - 2022 Translated from French by Polly MacIntosh - 155 Pages- A Paris in July 2024 Novel

(This book is one of the prizes available to participants.)

Clara Reads Proust by Stéphane Carlier was a total delight. If you love Proust, Reading, Paris then you cannot go wrong with this marvelous novel. Plus there is a reallllly. neat cat, an inside look at a Parisian hair salon, and lots of fun stuff.

"Clara is a hairdresser at Cindy Coiffure, a sleepy French salon with an identity crisis. Her relationship is fizzling out. Her tanoholic boss Madame Habib worships Jacques Chirac and talks longingly of her days in Paris. The highlight of the week was when the dishy technician came to repair the display cabinet. And now Madame Lévy-Leroyer wants to go blonde. Clara can’t help but wonder if there’s more to life . . .

Everything changes when a customer leaves behind the first volume of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. As Clara reads, she discovers a whole new world, leading her to strike up an unexpected friendship. And slowly but surely, she will work out who she wants to be." From the Publisher 

90 percent of the novel has has Clara in her middle 20s.  An epilogue takes her decades forward where we see how Reading Proust completely transformed her life.

Stéphane Carlier grew up around Paris in the 1970s. He worked for the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs for several years, with whom he spent a decade in the United States. He has also lived in India and Portugal. Clara Reads Proust is his eighth novel and the first to be translated into English. Polly mackintosh is an editor and a translator from French. She has translated the work of Alain Ducasse, Antoine Laurain, Serge Joncour and early French feminist Marie-Louise Gagneur. She currently lives in London.