The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl

I have read and enjoyed almost all of Ms. Reichl’s work – she’s a wonderful writer with a special talent for describing and writing about food. For years, she was the restaurant critic for the New York Times and then editor of Gourmet, one of my favorite magazine subscriptions. Here’s the collection of what I think are her best books. I suggest you find any of these books to get a taste (sorry) of her best work.

A few months ago, I was quite pleased to receive an advance copy of her latest novel from the publisher and saved it for our trip knowing it would be a delight.

When I started The Paris Novel, I immediately I had to remind myself that, yes, yes, this is one of my favorite authors. After reading the second chapter I had to close the book, as she included a very graphic child sexual abuse scene. I found it quite upsetting…so I chose another book to read for a while. But soon I had to try again, reminding myself it’s Ruth Reichl you always enjoy her books.

The book begins with Stella living a dull life in New York city. Her self-absorbed single mother (who chose to ignore the abuse described from a man she was seeing) has died and left her money and one request for Stella to go to Paris.

Once there, she discovers a vintage store, tries on a stunning Dior dress, and meets an older gentleman who introduces her to the real Paris. Stella becomes immersed in French cuisine, spends time working and living at the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore, and unravels mysteries about her (possible) biological father — Ms. Reichl included the famous Richard Oldney as one of the father figures.

With the help of a precocious young French girl, she researches into the life of a female artist from the Impressionistic period whose work has been overlooked due to societal attitudes towards women in the arts.

Everything seems charmed for Stella, she meets generous people, given free apartments, treated to fine meals to dine on, even couture clothing and, without giving too much away — finding romance.

Whew! It’s as if my dear Ms. Reichl tried to include every possible Parisian cliche into the this novel. I kept reading The Paris Novel, despite its predictable characters and tropes.

Why did I keep reading ~~ the beautifully written descriptions of the incredible food and drink to be found everywhere in France. Reading these sections made me long to book a ticket and visit just to eat. Here’s just a sample.

What would we say? The wine spoke for itself. We were drinking time, drinking history, tasting the past. You can’t talk about that, and only idiots would try.

The oysters arrived on a deep bed of ice. She had never eaten an oyster, and she stared down at the platter. A ruffle of black encircled each opalescent heart; she thought of orchids. Triangles of lemon sat on the ice, and she picked one up and squeezed it, inhaling the prickly aroma. Then she reached for an oyster, tipped her head, and tossed it back. The oyster was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean. She closed her eyes to savor the experience, make it last.

The chef made the most beautiful salad I’d ever seen. He threw everything into it— pieces of lemon, bits of cheese, and then he took the violets out of the vase and tossed in the petals. It was beautiful.

I finished The Paris Novel, but I admit it was a struggle, and in my opinion, it was not at all up to par with her other books.

Her author’s note at the end was quite interesting, as it seems some of the novel may have been somewhat autobiographical ~~ namely the exquisite dress found in a vintage shop.

But please, please don’t discount Ms. Reichl based on this review of her latest. Read any of her other books (see above), you’ll find them delightful and bound to make you hungry for good food.

CLICK HERE — to read about two of my favorites.

A digital review copy was provided by Random House via Netgalley.

Fabulous Fjords

Sorry for the delay, are you ready to hear about our trip? If so, keep reading

If not – totally understand – skip this post. There will be books to tell you about over the next days.

We started with a few days in Edinburgh to acclimate to the time change before sailing. Had a lovely B&B run by a great couple who had lots of ideas and served the most incredible breakfast. It rained off and on but we went out anyway with no schedule or agenda – hopped on a bus and stumbled into old town, wandered around, discovered a hidden garden, and had tea in a little tea room.

Sorry we didn’t take many photos as the weather was so dreary. When it came time for our departure, we discovered our ship left from a dock just near where the Britannia is docked – so we dashed over and took a tour. The Britannia was the Queen’s favorite place to relax and many important events were held there. It felt very comfortable and relaxed. I would have been most happy guest – had I ever been invited aboard.

As we finished the tour of the Britannia, we got a good view of our ship ~~The Star Legend. It’s a smaller cruise ship carrying only 200 passengers. Note second photo is a publicity photo from Windstar ~~ as I wanted to show it’s a very pretty ship.

Here’s a map of our cruise itinerary. Such a wonderful trip, which went by all too swiftly.

I created a very amateur video with the photo highlights. Full disclosure, we are not very good at remembering to take photos – we tend to go exploring and forget all about taking pictures.

Photos range from our very nice ship’s cabin, to the tiny Norwegian towns, the amazing fjords, waterfalls – lots of waterfalls, a train trip up into the hills, and ends up in Copenhagen, where we spent our last night touring Tivoli Gardens, after the crowds had left, and with wonderful lights.

To play this very amateur video ~~ Click HERE

Fear not, we’re still barmy about books here. Between this trip and the recent bout with COVID, I have a stack of recent reads to tell you about. Be back soon.

Down and out with Covid

Hello, thanks for all your well wishes, It seems we’re not alone, many are also suffering from Covid.

This was our first time, others, we hear, are experiencing it for the second or third time…poor dears. And we were/are fully vaccinated.

I think we’re back with the living – feeling a bit better, still coughing, very, very tired, and still testing positive (arghhh).

And so we wait it out. Wearing masks both indoors and out…remember doing that?

Not fun, not fun at all.

Friends and neighbors have been wonderful – made us soup, brought groceries, lovely flowers – even pie.

We are very fortunate to have such a group of loved ones – we are so appreciative and feeling the care.

But for now, I’m going to take a break until I feel better and gather my thoughts to bore you with our recent trip – it seems so long ago now.

Be back soon.

As you can imagine, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I know, it’s been a long while and I have lots to tell you…

There was a once in lifetime trip – involving this lovely ship

And beautiful fjords, in sometimes dicey weather

Full admission, I stole that photo from the internet and I am not up to going through all our photos right now….

Why, you may ask?

Two days after arriving home I came down with COVID – I successfully dodged it up until now…getting all and every vaccination and booster.

Then, this morning Husband came down with it too. We are very rarely sick at the same time, always one to take care of the other – not this time.

We are a pitiful sight – endless cups of tea, sounds of coughing from separate bedrooms, protecting our separate dishes, tissue boxes everywhere, and all the over the counter cough and pain relievers we could find from our medicine chest. However, as one dear friend pointed out, it’s good thing we didn’t come down with this while traveling ~~ always a silver living.

On the way home from picking up our Paxlovid* – we stopped at our favorite neighborhood restaurant and got enough varied Chinese dishes to last us three or four days. Why is it when you’re sick, Chinese seems the only cure?

Sorry to say, there will be an recovery interval before I am back to myself and eager to tell you all about everything. It was indeed a trip of a lifetime, and yes, there were books which I read on the trip and now during this illness.

But for right now, my only trip is to repair to my chambers with more tea, a book – and yet another nap.

In case you haven’t ascertained – I am a lousy sick person.

*while effective, turns out to be a wretched drug – giving a variety of unwelcome side effects and a constant horrid taste in your mouth.

The Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith

My wonderful sister sent me these books, one by one over the span of a couple of years. They are lovely to look at and my OCD side loved seeing them lined up on my shelf as the spines are as pretty as the covers.

And so they sat, and sat. I often dipped into Ms. Smith’s first one in the quartet – Autumn- but I never got too far. So this past month I decided to delve deep and get going on this very well-received, Booker-prize winning series.

I guess I’ll start with the story line — Daniel Gluck is 103 years old sleeping deeply in a hospital bed. At his side is Elisabeth Demand, a 32-year-old art lecturer. They became friends when Elisabeth was a girl, with Daniel acting as a father figure and a teacher. As she reads to him in his hospital room, she remembers the conversations they had back then, how he cultivated her interest in art and taught her so many other things. And as Daniel slumbers, we observe his dreams: surreal recollections of his career and unrequited love.

We also follow Elizabeth’s life outside of the hospital visits and this gives Ms. Smith the chance to commentate on the state of the post-Brexit Britain. From the idiotic bureaucracy at the post office, to the ominous electric fence erected in the middle of town, it is an unhappy portrait. Not unlike what we continue to go through here in the U.S.

I’m tired of the news. I’m tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren’t, and deals so simplistically with what’s truly appalling. I’m tired of the vitriol. I’m tired of anger. I’m tired of the meanness. I’m tired of selfishness. I’m tired of how we’re doing nothing to stop it. I’m tired of how we’re encouraging it. I’m tired of the violence that’s on it’s way, that’s coming, that hasn’t happened yet. I’m tired of liars. I’m tired of sanctified liars. I’m tired of how those liars have let this happen. I’m tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or did it on purpose. I’m tired of lying governments. I’m tired of people not caring whether they’re being lied to anymore. I’m tired of being made to feel this fearful. I’m tired of pusillanimosity.

I don’t think that’s actually a word, Elisabeth says.

I’m tired of not knowing the right words, her mother says.

At this point I have to tell you that, although Autumn is a short novel, I still skipped around a lot — but at times the writing was beautiful and heart-wrenching – I especially like this passage about reading.

The words had acted like a charm. They’d released it all, in seconds. They’d made everything happening stand just far enough away.
It was nothing less than magic. Who needs a passport?
Who am I? Where am I? What am I?

I’m reading.

But then there were pages and passages that frustrated this reader with their stream of consciousness:

Where do I start? I’m the butterfly antenna. I’m the chemicals that paint’s made of. I’m the person dead at the water’s edge. I’m the water. I’m the edge. I’m the skin cells. I’m the smell of disinfectant. I’m that thing they rub against your mouth to moisten it, can you feel it? I’m soft. I’m hard. I’m glass. I’m sand. I’m a yellow plastic bottle. I’m all the plastics in the seas and in the guts of all the fishes. I’m the fishes. I’m the seas. I’m molluscs in the seas. I’m the flattened-out old beer can. I’m the shopping trolley in the canal. I’m the note on the stave, the bird on the line. I’m the stave. I’m the line. I’m spiders. I’m seeds. I’m water. I’m heart. I’m the cotton of the sheet. ….. I’m pollution. I’m a fall of horseshit on a country road a hundred years ago. … I’m the fly …..I haven’t even started telling you what I am. I’m everything that makes everything. I’m everything that unmakes everything. …. I’m the voice that tells no story.

And at times it is cringe-worthily over written

(sort of like that sentence, sorry):

He’s nothing but a torn leaf scrap on the surface of a running brook, green veins and leaf-stuff, water and current, Daniel Gluck taking leaf of his senses at last, his tongue a broad green leaf, leaves growing through the sockets of his eyes, leaves thrustling (very good word for it) out of his ears, leaves tenderizing down through the caves of his nostrils and out and round til he’s swathed in foliage, leafskin, relief

I flipped pages back and forth trying to get a bead on where this novel was going, all the while remembering this review from the Atlantic ~~

“Autumn is a gorgeously constructed puzzle that challenges the reader to solve it, with a narrative that darts back and forth in time and space. . . . As the novel proceeds, she layers together fragments of books and paintings and song lyrics in an act of literary decoupage, as if to mimic the fragile patchwork of national identity”.

I guess I’m not up to the challenge, because while I did finish Autumn, I’m not sure what I read — yes there was a story of a dying man as he looks back on his life, but just as I was getting into the rhythm of that — sudden rants about Brexit, disconnected thoughts that continue page after page, and then there are endless lists that only someone made sense.

The relationship between Daniel and Elisabeth kept me reading the story. I did chuckle and enjoy the efforts behind getting a passport renewed, but I didn’t understand the tree thing (if you’ve read Autumn, and do understand the tree analogies please explain.)

In summary, Ms. Smith has given us interesting characters, with some compelling vignettes, but all leading to nowhere clear. Autumn is greatly admired and won the Booker Prize — but this reader is obtuse and unable to figure it out.

The series will stay on my shelves as they are so nice — and maybe to impress– but mostly to perhaps later try the next one — Winter.

If you want to try this series, fair warning — it is very much suited to a British audience with expressions, subtleties and personalities that are singularly British.

What’s next? I’ll be taking a short break, more on why later.

Suffice it to say — it involves some packing…

The Flavia de Luce Series

A good friend and book barmy follower asked if I had read any in this series by author Alan Bradley. It took me a minute, but I remembered that, yes I have. I’ve read the first four, but somehow forgot all about them.

This is not a reflection on the books, which I thoroughly enjoyed, just a reflection on my age and sometimes poor memory. I also realized I never wrote about them here.

Let me tell you a bit about the heroine – Flavia de Luce is an eleven year-old girl, mature beyond her years, with an interest in all things chemistry-related, but with a special passion for poisons.

Let’s join Flavia as she mounts her trusty bicycle, Gladys, to solve a murder in the first in the series The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

It is the summer of 1950, and at the once-grand estate of Buckshaw, situated in the English countryside, Flavia is drawn into a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, several hours later, she finds a man lying in the cucumber patch, as he takes his dying breath.

While she is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when this murder comes to Buckshaw. When her widowed father is suspected and arrested for the crime, Flavia is soon trying to untangle the knots surrounding the stranger, a rare stamp, her father’s old schoolmaster, and the dead man in the garden.

I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.

She has many allies in her adventures with a variety of unlikely helpers and protectors. Flavia has to deal with her annoying older sisters, the dotty old housekeeper, her largely detached father and the intriguing and obviously inferior police inspector Hewitt. My favorite character (aside from Flavia) was the gardener and handyman, Dogger, who suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome and just wants to live a quite life but he has a special connection to the youngest De Luce.

The book (and the series that I’ve read) is filled witty intelligent writing.

It is not unknown for fathers with a brace of daughters to reel off their names in order of birth when summoning the youngest, and I had long ago become accustomed to being called ‘Ophelia Daphne Flavia, damn it.

Flavia is funny, and as I said earlier, quite mature for her age.

If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as ‘dearie.’ When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poisons, and come to Cyanide, I am going to put under “Uses” the phrase “Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one ‘Dearie.’

Flavia is also fearless and unflappable Turns out she is is a natural sleuth and is soon bothering everyone in the village to gain insight into the murder and clear her father’s name.

People love to talk–especially when the talking involves answering the questions of others–because it makes them feel wanted. […] I had long ago discovered that the best way to obtain answers about anything was to walk up to the closest person and ask.

The series can be labeled as cozy as there is minimal blood and gore, but there’s lots of action, red herrings and intriguing twists. The characters are so well-written that if you’re like me, you may begin to think of them as real people. I found it refreshing to see that our heroine was thrown off direction as readily as the reader. And this is the bonus – what makes this series stand out — the reader is seeing the world through an eleven year-old’s eyes which makes the story lines come alive.

I love Flavia; her intelligence mixed with mischief, her pluckiness and resourcefulness, her composure when encountering the morbid, and ultimately, how she accomplishes remarkable things while whiling away the long, solitary hours at the crumbling estate.

Mr. Bradley has beautifully captured the foibles of Flavia’s young age — her indignant need to be considered (at least) as capable as the adults around her, then in a different way, how small and lonely she feels when she wants to return to being a child, and doesn’t exactly know how to do it.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie won The Crime Writer’s Association Debut Dagger award and the Agatha Award for best first novel. And Marilyn Stasio, who reviews crime novels for The New York Times Book Review, included it as one of the best mysteries of the year.

The story goes, that after completing only fifteen pages of Sweetness, Mr. Bradley (within eight days) had secured book deals in three countries, not withstanding, this was his first attempt at writing a novel at 70 years of age.

So, Book Barmy followers, if you enjoy reading English countryside mysteries, without excessive violence, but are looking for something more than a typical comfort read – how about a most unusual detective, great writing, humor, and a unruly amount of knowledge about poisons — treat yourself to this wonderful series. I’m putting number five on my list.

N.B. In case you’re wondering about the titles, Mr. Bradley frequently borrows lines from canonical English poems which he often quotes before the title page