Tag Archives: Paris Literary Tours

Back to Sarah’s Key

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The original US cover of Sarah's Key. (In which the Eiffel Tower strangely appears on the wrong side of Luxembourg Palace?)

The original US cover of Sarah’s Key. (In which the Eiffel Tower strangely appears on the wrong side of Luxembourg Palace. Anyone else notice that or is it just me?)

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay was one of the first books I wanted to map out during my year in Paris. I read this book with my Chicago-based book club and never forgot it. I was determined to find the sites from the book and take some photos for my blog. My original post, with photos of the commemorative plaques and statues near the Eiffel Tower can be found right here.

I’ve been meaning to update that post for awhile now. Back in 2012, I made some new discoveries and went back to take some more photographs. How it happened is kind of cool.

I noticed that one of my favorite Paris bloggers (Richard Nahem of Eye Prefer Paris) had posted photos of the courtyard of the fictional apartment from Sarah’s Key. But wait! His photos were of 26, rue Saintonge in the Marais, and mine were from 32, rue Saintonge. Whoops!

I tweeted out to Richard (I’m @parisartclub, he’s @eyepreferparis) wondering about the mix-up, when who should tweet us back? Tatiana de Rosnay herself (what a treat!), explaining the reason for our confusion. Apparently, in the book Sarah’s address is 26, rue de Saintonge and in the movie it’s 32.

So then of course I had to go see the address from the book for myself. I good friend and fellow reader from Chicago was visiting and was game for a literary trek. We headed into the Marais (she had a recent travel article in hand about the hopping Haut-Marais) and we found ourselves near rue de Saintonge. “This way to Sarah’s house!” I pointed. Obviously, book lovers like me have a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction.

I found the bright blue doors at #26, just like Eye Prefer Paris had earlier. My friend and I also got the chance to peek in the courtyard, and we had a little “book club moment.” We looked up at the open windows, picturing Sarah’s old neighbor the music teacher, playing the violin as he sat in his window. Seriously, I think I wiped away a tear or two.

Here is the passage from Sarah’s Key that we recalled:

     Outside, the girl saw a neighbor wearing pajamas leaning out his window. He was a nice man, a music teacher. He liked playing the violin, and she liked listening to him. He often played for her and her brother from across the courtyard. Old French songs like “Sur le pont d’Avignon” and `A la claire fontaine,” and also songs from her parents’ country, songs that always got her mother and father dancing gaily, her mother’s slippers sliding across the floorboards, her father twirling her round and round, round and round until they all felt dizzy.

“What are you doing? Where are you taking them?” he called out.

His voice ran across the courtyard, covering the baby’s yells. The man in the raincoat did not answer him.

“But you can’t do this,” said the neighbor. “They’re honest good people! You can’t do this!”

At the sound of his voice, shutters began to open, faces peered out from behind curtains.

But the girl noticed that nobody moved, nobody said anything. They simply watched.

 

 

The bright blue doorway to 26 rue de Saintonge

The bright blue doorway to 26 rue de Saintonge

 

The fictional courtyard from the book Sarah's Key at 36 rue de Saintonge, Paris

The fictional courtyard from the book Sarah’s Key at 26 rue de Saintonge, Paris. Can’t you just picture the nice man and his violin leaning out the window?

 

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The plaque on a nearby school. It says: "From 1942 to 1944, more than 11,000 children were deported from France by the Nazis with the active participation of the Vichy government of France and assassinated in death camps because they were Jews. MOre than 500 of these children lived in the 3rd arrondissement. A number of them went to the elementary schools in this quarter. Let's Never Forget Them.

The plaque on a nearby school on rue des Quatre-Fils in the 3rd.  It says: “From 1942 to 1944, more than 11,000 children were deported from France by the Nazis with the active participation of the Vichy government of France and assassinated in death camps because they were born Jewish. More than 500 of these children lived in the 3rd arrondissement. A number of them went to the Ecoles Elementaires Filles et Garcons des Quatre-Fils.  Never Forget Them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is all probably a good reminder as we prepare to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Paris on August 25, 2014. Ne les oublions jamais.

 

Paris Was the Place

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You probably think I will buy any book with a picture of Paris on the cover. No, really. I won’t. I’m not that easy.

But when your cover is this pretty, the font this inviting, and you have blurbs on the back from the likes of Lily King, Richard Russo, Ayelet Waldman, Margot Livesy, Maryann O’Hare and Sarah Blake, you’ve got me.

Paris Was The Place by Susan Conley is the story of a young woman’s experience while working at an immigration detention center for girls in Paris. You could say it’s Little Bee in Paris, but that would be missing half of the book’s appeal.

In some ways, Willow (“Willie”) Pears is a refugee too. Broken and lost after her mother’s recent death, Willie leaves California and comes to Paris in search of connections. Willie is estranged from her father, but wants to be closer to her brother Luke who lives in Paris with his boyfriend. Willie is a poetry professor at the Academy of France, and begins volunteering at an immigration center for girls. As Willie draws out the refugees’ heartbreaking stories, which they need to prepare for their asylum hearings, she becomes deeply involved in their desperate hope for a better life in France. In the meantime, Willie makes her own “French Connection” with an immigration lawyer who works at the center.

Part of the appeal of Willie’s story is the way she makes Paris her place. When Willie first arrives in Paris she is mystified by the geography of the city:

The sequencing of the neighborhoods here baffles me – arranged like the curvature of some terrestrial snail. I’m in the tenth arrondissement, anchored by two of Paris’s great train stations, where the alleyways weave into mapless places. I’m not embarrassed to carry my Michelin.

With her Michelin in hand, Willie maps her way through Paris, narrating her trips and transfers on the Métro, guiding us through each arrondissement. From her brother’s nice apartment on Victor Hugo in the 16th, her own apartment on Rue de la Clef in the Latin Quarter, the detention center on Rue de Metz in the 10th, and the Academy of France in the 6th, Willie stakes her claim on her new city.

Just for fun, I plotted out Willie’s Paris on this Google Map. Now you can walk in the footsteps of the characters of Paris Was the Place too.

Willie’s Michelin guide helps her unlock the baffling secrets of Paris. And isn’t that exactly the way it is when you’re a tourist or an expat in France? You might not understand half of what is said around you every day, but at least you can read your Métro map. Like color-coded bread crumbs that will always lead you home.

But there’s rarely a direct route. You need to study the map and plot your connections. What’s the best way to get from the 16th to the 10th? Can I get there without having to crowd in with all the tourists on Line 1? Can I do it with only one transfer? I used to start every day with my home-brewed espresso, plotting out my day on my own dog-eared Paris L’Indispensable.

And then, one day, just like Willie, you’ve mastered the Métro and you’ve developed an instinct for the spiraling arrondissements. You learned to cope with a life that isn’t always linear. You’ve made your connection and you feel like you belong. Paris is your place.

What makes Paris Was The Place so wonderful is the way Willie’s search for geographical connections runs parallel with her efforts to navigate through her personal connections: with her brother, her French lover, the girls at the detention center, her complicated family history, her widowed father. Some connections are made, while others are tragically lost. The fact that Willie’s estranged father is a mapmaker adds even more depth and grace to her story. Because belonging isn’t always just a matter of maps and Métros. It’s about making connections in the baffling, mapless places of the human heart.

My dog-eared L'Indispensable Paris Arrodissement Map. My own personal Rosetta Stone.

My dog-eared L’Indispensable Paris Arrondissement Map. My own personal Rosetta Stone.

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My home stop on Line 6 in the 16th, which Willie calls “the grown-up part of Paris” with “older women in pencil skirts walking their miniature poodles.” Ouch. That hurts. I swear I don’t own a pencil skirt or a miniature poodle.

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Willie, a fellow word nerd, would have loved this Métro stop too. The words from the Declaration of the Rights of Man form a word search at this Concorde Métro stop.

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I love this Art Nouveau Métro stop at Réaumur Sébastopol on Line 4. Only one more stop until Willie’s stop for the Rue de Metz detention center.

One of my favorite Métro stops. The Port Dauphine Métro stop on Line 2, just one stop past Luke's apartment on Victor Hugo.

One of my favorite Métro stops. The Port Dauphine Métro stop on Line 2, just one stop past Luke’s apartment on Victor Hugo. Just a short walk from the lovely Bois de Boulogne.

Who doesn't love the whimsical Louvre-Rivoli Métro stop?

Who doesn’t love the whimsical glass beads in the design of the Palais-Royal-Musée de Louvre Métro stop at Place Colette?

The gardens of Musée Rodin, the site of Willie and Gita's field trip

The gardens of Musée Rodin, the site of Willie and Gita’s field trip

Luxembourg Gardens - where Willie and Gita enjoyed their brown-bag lunches together

Luxembourg Gardens – where Willie and Gita enjoyed their brown-bag lunches together

I have a feeling that it’s not just Willie and I who share this need to map out our place in Paris. Check out this quote from Susan Conley’s website, where she talks about her own Paris map OCD:

My craziest Francophile moment came when I found myself making these gigantic maps of the Paris neighborhoods covered in my novel. I used indelible markers on poster board in my little rabbit warren of an office on the third floor of our old house, and I tried to recreate the streets that Willie and Macon walked on in Paris. These hand-scrawled maps were my blue print of the city. They’re almost illegible but they gave me access to the parts of the city I really had to make sure the novel rendered fully. I needed to make the maps to feel like I was there in Paris. Then I knew that the reader would (hopefully!) feel like they were there too.

Yes, Susan, when I read your book I felt like I was in Paris too. Thanks for that, because now I miss it just a little less.

Paris Was The Place by Susan Conley:  Highly recommended.

Paris L’Insdispensable: Indispensable.

Zelda and Scott in Paris

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Therese Fowler’s new novel Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (St. Martin’s Press 2013) is a welcome reboot in the field of Lost Generation literature. This is the turbulent story of Zelda Sayre, a young handful of a southern girl, the daughter of a prominent Montgomery, Alabama judge, who married the not-yet-successful F. Scott Fitzgerald after meeting him at a country club dance in 1918.

Z presents a refreshing and much needed counterpoint to Hemingway’s Moveable Feast and Scott’s Fitgerald’s Tender is the Night. It might cause you to reconsider nearly everything you thought was true about Scott and Zelda’s marriage, about their relationship with Ernest Hemingway, and about the cause of Zelda’s mental illness. It’s finally Zelda’s turn, and she doesn’t hold back.

Have you noticed that I’ve completely fallen for the illusion that Zelda is the one who is talking in Z, and not Fowler? That’s how well this book seems to capture Zelda’s voice.

Z brought me back to my own year in Paris, when I walked the same streets as Zelda and Scott, hung out at the same cafés and brasseries, enjoyed the exhilerating (but thankfully much tamer) life of an American expat. I took every literary tour I could, so of course I have some photos of the places and scenes mentioned in the book Z.

Just a caveat: all of the stories I tell in the captions below about what happened at the sites are a mixture of the truth and myth that circulates through literary circles in Paris. I can’t vouch for the stories, except to say this is what somebody told me and I believed them.

14 rue de Tilsitt, Zelda and Scott's first apartment in Paris in about 1925. It's located on the right bank in the 8th arrondissement, which is still home to some of the most expensive real estate in Paris. Hemingway used to claim that he felt uncomfortable going to the Fitzgerald's apartment, that he much preferred his slummier surroundings on the Left Bank.

14 rue de Tilsitt, Zelda and Scott’s first apartment in Paris in about 1925. It’s located on the right bank in the 8th arrondissement, just a block away from the Arc de Triomphe. It’s a lovely area within a block or two of Champs Elysées. Hemingway used to claim that he felt uncomfortable going to the Fitzgerald’s apartment, that he much preferred his slummier surroundings on the Left Bank.

Another view of 14 rue de Tilsitt, which currently houses a street level café. Rue de Tilsitt is a small little street which forms the first circle around L'Etoile.

Another view of 14 rue de Tilsitt, which currently houses a street level café. Rue de Tilsitt is a small little street which forms the first circle around L’Etoile.

Zelda and Scott's view of the Arc de Triomphe from the corner of L'Etoile closest to their apartment. Not bad.

Zelda and Scott’s view of the Arc de Triomphe from the corner of L’Etoile closest to their apartment. Not bad. Supposedly, Scott once rode a tricycle down the Champs Elysées after he’d had too much to drink, hitting passerby with a baguette.

L'Auberge de Venise at 10 rue Delambre in Monparnasse. Formerly The Dingo, where Scott Fitzgerald met Ernest Hemingway in 1925.

L’Auberge de Venise at 10 rue Delambre in Monparnasse. Formerly The Dingo, where Scott Fitzgerald met Ernest Hemingway in 1925.

In the window of L'Auberge de Venise is an article from La Monde titled "Remembering the Epoque of the Dingo Bar." It's hard for me to translate, but it says something like: this is where two of my favorite authors used to get blasted ("drunk mouth"), blurry and reconciled. A place to make you thirsty, for sure.

In the window of L’Auberge de Venise is an article from La Monde titled “Remembering the Epoque of the Dingo Bar.” It’s hard for me to translate, but it says something like: this is where two of my favorite authors used to get blasted (“drunk mouth”), blurry and reconciled. A place to make you thirsty, for sure.

The view inside the former Dingo Bar. I've heard two different versions of how Fitzgerald and Ernest met, but in both versions, serious drinking was involved.

The view inside the former Dingo Bar. I’ve heard two different versions of how Fitzgerald and Ernest met, but in both versions, serious drinking was indeed involved.

The doorway to Zelda and Scott's other Paris apartment (1928-ish?) on the corner of Luxembourg Gardens. The Fitzgeralds knew how to spend money - this is some of the best and most expensive real estate in Paris.

The doorway to Zelda and Scott’s other Paris apartment where they lived in 1928 at 58 rue Vaugirard on the corner of Luxembourg Gardens. The Fitzgeralds knew how to spend money – this is some of the most expensive real estate in Paris.

Another view of the Fitzgerald's apartment at 58 rue de Vaugirard. They lived here on their third trip to Paris in 1928. Their daughter Scottie enjoyed playing in the nearby gardens.

Another view of the Fitzgerald’s apartment at 58 rue de Vaugirard. They lived here on their third trip to Paris in 1928. Their daughter Scottie enjoyed playing in the nearby gardens. This building would be subsequently damaged by gunfire during the liberation of Paris in 1944.

Picture little Scottie playing with the sailboats in Luxembourg Gardens. Then picture Zelda nursing a horrible hangover in one of the low-slung "Luxembourg chairs." For my fellow Francophilles: did you know you can order these chairs and have them shipped to the United States? Check out the website of Deyrolle, at 46 rue de Bac in Paris. This happens to be the same taxidermy shop used as a film location in Midnight in Paris. If you can't find the Luxembourg chairs on their website, you can always try to email them. I came **this close** to ordering one for my husband for Christmas last year. We loved them THAT much.

Picture little Scottie playing with the sailboats in Luxembourg Gardens. Then picture Zelda nursing a horrible hangover in one of the low-slung “Luxembourg chairs.”

My friends and I enjoying a fall day in my favorite Luxembourg chairs. For my fellow Francophiles: did you know you can order these chairs and have them shipped to the United States? Check out the website of Deyrolle at 46 rue de Bac in Paris. (Which just happens to be the same taxidermy shop filmed in Midnight in Paris.) If you can't find the chairs on their website, you can always try to email them. I came **this close** to ordering one for my husband last Christmas. We loved them that much.

My friends and I enjoying a fall day in my favorite Luxembourg chairs. For my fellow Francophiles: did you know you can order these chairs and have them shipped to the United States? Check out the website of Deyrolle at 46 rue de Bac in Paris. (Which just happens to be the same taxidermy shop filmed in Midnight in Paris.) If you can’t find the chairs on their website, you can always try to email them. I came **this close** to ordering one for my husband last Christmas. We loved them that much.

La Closerie des Lilas, the restaurant where Scott and Ernest met to plan their drive to Lyons together - a trip that would cement their friendship.

La Closerie des Lilas, the restaurant where Scott and Ernest met to plan their drive to Lyons together – a trip that would cement their friendship.

Café de Flore, another St.Germain café where the Fitzgeralds hung out with the rest of the Lost Generation.

Café de Flore, another St. Germain café where the Fitzgeralds hung out with the rest of the Lost Generation.

This is the site of Michaud’s, a fashionable restaurant in St. Germain where the Fitzgeralds often dined. It is now Le Comptoir des Saints Pere, located on the corner of rue Jacob and rue des Saints Pere. It is the place where Hemingway’s infamous “show me your penis” story takes place. In Moveable Feast, Fitzgerald supposedly confessed to Hemingway his insecurities about the size of his penis, thanks to a nasty comment fron Zelda. Hemingway is supposed to have invited Scott downstairs to the bathroom, where Hemingway took a look for himself and told Scott that he was perfectly normal, and that Scott shouldn’t listen to Zelda. “Zelda’s crazy,” Hemingway said. In Z, Zelda gets her long-awaited revenge against her “frenemy” Hem. Zelda has a deliciously alternative story comparing Scott and Hem’s measurements. I’m not sure which version I believe, but I am definitely leaning toward Team Zelda. (If your book club is anything like mine, this is going to be a hot discussion topic after a few bottles of vin rouge!)

Z by Therese Fowler: Highly, highly, highly recommended.

I hope you pick up your own copy of Z very soon. And by “pick up” I mean “buy.” And by “buy” I really mean that you should rush down to your local independent bookstore to grab a copy as soon as you can. If you don’t have a local indie of your own, feel free to buy it in ebook form from the bookstore I work for in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. All you have to do is create a Kobo account on the website. We’d appreciate your support. Then come back here to the comments and tell me what you think!

The folks at The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn, Illinois love Z so much we've decorated our front window in honor of Zelda.

The folks at The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn, Illinois love Z so much we’ve decorated our front window in honor of Zelda.

Luncheon of the Boating Party: A Day in Chatou

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Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-1) makes me want to pull up a chair, sit down next to Gustave Caillebotte (right foreground) and pour myself a glass of wine. Maybe I would even feed the doggie some grapes and chat with Aline Charigot, Renoir’s future wife (the pretty woman in the red-flowered hat).

This is an accessible, sunny painting that reflects a leisurely Sunday afternoon at one of Renoir’s favorite hang-outs, Restaurant de la Maison Fournaise, just outside Paris in Chatou on the Seine. Did you know that you can still go there today? As Renoir said himself: “You won’t regret the trip, I assure you. There isn’t a lovelier place in all Paris surroundings.”

For a long time, the restaurant suffered from neglect and deterioration. As Renoir’s son Jean said in his book, Renoir, My Father (1962):  “I paid a visit to the place last year. How depressing it was! Nothing but factories, mounds of coal, blackened walls and dirty water. The leprosy of modern industry has eaten away the little woods and luxuriant grass.”

Maison Fournaise before renovation. From the restaurant’s website.

From 1984 to 1990, the restaurant was completely renovated with a combination of art grants and philanthropy. Today, the scene is much improved.

Maison Fournaise today

Renoir’s balcony still stands, complete with the orange striped awning. 

The view from Renoir’s easel. 

“The place was delightful; a perpetual holiday. . . . At night there was always someone about who volunteered to play the piano for dancing. The tables on the terrace were pushed back into a corner. . . . the music floated out through the open window.” – Jean Renoir, in Renoir, My Father

I even brought out my own pastels and tried to capture the scene, but alas, I’m no Renoir.

My art bag and I were here. . . . I just wish some “Midnight in Paris” magic would transport me back to the day. . . .

Restaurant de la Maison Fournaise is easily reached by car or by train. You can take the same route that Renoir did from Paris to the Chatou-Croissy station via the RER A1 Line (Zone 4), where it is only a few minutes walk to what is now called “Ile des Impressionistes.”

It was this easy access that made the restaurant Renoir and Aline’s favorite meeting place back in 1880. According to Jean Renoir: “It was easy to reach. . . . There was a local Saint Germain train, every half hour, that stopped at the Chatou bridge station. At the Fournaises’ [my parents] found a group of friends who seemed to watch over their idyl with tender interest. The painter Caillebotte looked after Aline Charigot like a younger sister.”

You can read an imagined story of the couple’s developing romance in Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland, who said that she had often admired the painting and wondered about the models. Who were they, and why did they pose like they did?  “I saw tremendous story potential in these appealing characters, flushed with pleasure and enjoying a summer day on a terrace overlooking the Seine.” Vreeland imagines a love triangle between Renoir, Aline, and another woman in the painting, Alphonsine Fournaise, the daughter of the restaurant owner.

You can enjoy your own toast to Renoir and his women at the restaurant, where they offer an apertif called “The Alphonsine,” made of orange juice, champagne and grenadine.

My own book club back in Chicago read and enjoyed Susan Vreeland’s book, which I highly recommend. Right now, I am in the middle of Renoir, My Father by Jean Renoir, and I am pleasantly surprised what a good read it is. Jean’s memory was incredibly good, his writing is thoughtful, and the stories his father used to tell him make captivating history.

If you or your book club can’t get to Paris, maybe you can schedule a visit to the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. to see the original painting. At the Art Institute of Chicago you can see another of Renoir’s paintings from Chatou called Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rower’s Lunch) (1875).

At the very least, you can enjoy some art history at the website of Maison Fournaise here.

Lunch with Frankie Pratt

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Yesterday I found myself exploring the Left Bank with a copy of The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston. Recently released in the U.S. by Ecco Books, this scrapbook-style novel tells the story of a young woman who dreams of becoming a writer in the 1920’s. She goes to Vassar College, Greenwich Village in New York, and finally to Paris, where she snags a job with a literary review that just happens to publish James Joyce.

This book is like eye candy for anyone who loves Paris in the era of the 1920’s. Frankie first stops at the Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare & Co., where Frankie meets Sylvia Beach and becomes a member of the expat “clubhouse.” Fun fact in the acknowledgments of the book: in real life, Sylvia Beach was godmother to Caroline Preston’s mother, Sylvia Preston.

Frankie Pratt breezes through the standard sightseeing highlights of Paris and then heads down to the corner of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse in the heart of the Latin Quarter, as recommended by her guide “Paris With The Lid Lifted.” Frankie sits outside at Le Select, where she orders onion soup and “observes the sideshow.” (p. 162).

I decided to to the very same thing myself, except I settled for an inside seat. When I showed my sweet gap-toothed waiter the scene from the book, he was absolutely thrilled. In our mix of Franglais, he ask me if it was alright to take the book to show the manager. Who knows, I might be the first of a long line of Frankie Pratt literary tourists. (The onion soup was delish!)

Frankie strikes up a romance with her editor Jamie, a Lost Generation war veteran who, like most of that generation, or so it seems, likes to hit the Left Bank bars a little too hard. Frankie and Jamie stumble through a series of hot spots in the Left Bank, from Le Dome to La Rotunde on Boulevard Montparnasse (p. 178). I followed their footsteps, but without the booze. Oh, okay, maybe an occasional glass of St. Emillion.

There’s so much more to this lovely little graphic novel, including the “inside scoop” on the release of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises in 1926. According to Frankie, Jake Barnes is Hemingway “without testicles,” and Lady Brett Ashley is a more charmingly drunk version of the real life Lady Duff Twysden. (p. 187). Even Charles Lindberg makes an appearance when he lands his first Trans-Atlantic flight in Paris in 1927. (p. 191).

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is not just a clever faux scrapbook; it’s a story of a young woman coming of age in New York and Paris, illustrated with the contents of Preston’s own mother’s scrapbooks and memorabilia. It’s a beautiful tribute to an adventuresome mother and her interesting life and times.

I urge you to pick up a copy of this book from your local independent bookstore. And if you’re lucky enough to get to Paris, it’s a great idea for a literary tour of the Left Bank.