Saturday, July 27, 2024
The End of Cheri by Colette- 1929 introduced by Judith Thurman and translated by Paul Eprile - 2022 - A Paris in July 2024 Novel
Monday, July 22, 2024
Nana - A 1927 Silent Film Directed by Jean Renoir- 2 Hours 27 Minutes. Available on YouTube with English Captions- A Paris in July 2024 Movie
Sunday, July 21, 2024
The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain - 2015. Translated from the French by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitkin - 242 Pages - A Paris in July 2024 Novel
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.
The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain - 2015. Translated from the French by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitkin - 242 Pages - A Paris in July 2024 Novel
The Red Notebook is my introduction to Antoine Laurain. I admit I never heard of him until I saw another of his novels as one of the gift books on the Paris in July 2024 homepage. I loved this book. It really made me feel I was in Paris.
The Red Notebook opens with a terrible scene of the mugging of a woman, Lauren
The Red Notebook is about Laurent, a bookseller you can’t help but like as you learn things about him, and Lauren, a woman whose mystery you’d want to know about as much as does Laurent, but she sadly is in a coma. On the way to the bookstore one morning, Laurent sees a beautiful bag thrown aside. After a bit of tinkering around with the bag, he thinks it was probably stolen and takes it to the police, but when the police do not help much, he decides to hand the bag to its owner.
However, in Paris, a city where millions of people live, of course, he cannot predict how he will find the owner of this bag, which has no identity. As we glance over the contents of the bag and especially read the contents of the red notebook, one cannot help but think that the bag’s owner is a fine person.
This is the magic of The Red Notebook. The beautiful mystery combined with the charm of Paris and the beautiful world Laurain creates.
The Red Notebook is a full of fascinating literary references, Patrick Modiano even appears as a character, there is a suitably charming cat named Putin, lots of interesting secondary characters, time in the bookstore. The ending is emotionally gratifying.
"Antoine Laurain is a novelist, screenwriter, journalist, director and collector of antique keys. A truly born and bred Parisian, after studying film, he began his career directing short films and writing screenplays. His passion for art led him to take a job assisting an antiques dealer in Paris. The experience provided the inspiration for his first novel, The Portrait, winner of the Prix Drouot.
Antoine’s novels have been translated into over twenty languages, including Arabic and Korean. Sales of his books across all formats in English have surpassed 180,000 copies, and The Red Notebook (2015) has become one of Gallic Books’ bestsellers both in the UK and the USA, and has been selected for HRH the Duchess of Cornwall’s Reading Room.
Also published: French Rhapsody (2016), The Portrait (2017), Smoking Kills (2018) and Vintage 1954 (2019)." from Gallic Books
I have already begun his latest novel An Astronomer in Love and hope to post upon it this month
Mel Ulm
The Reading Life
Saturday, July 20, 2024
"The Orange Fish" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 8 Pages - Included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields - 2004
Clara Reads Proust by Stéphane Carlier - 2022 Translated from the French by Polly MacIntosh - 155 Pages- Paris in July 2024 Novel
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.