After reading The Paris Wife I felt the urge to read more about Paris as I'm nurturing a vague hope of a trip there next spring. A bit of Googling brought me a few recommendations that I ordered from the library. The first to arrive was Left Bank by Kate Muir. I was a bit embarrassed on collecting it from the library to discover that it was labelled 'romance' (although to be honest my library does seem to be a bit hit and miss in what it deems 'general', 'literary fiction' and 'romance'). It was a lightweight tale of love, adultery, motherhood and self-invention with the odd bit of philosophy thrown in. It had some nice humour and descriptions of Paris, but generally not my cup of tea.
The next recommendation to arrive was The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy. Published in 1958 it is loosely based on the year that Dundy spent in Paris. A sort of coming of age novel, its protagonist, Sally Jay Gorce is funny, interesting, infuriating and complicated. The Paris set she is part of seems very much the wannabe artistic successors of Hemingway et al. The novel is full of comic characters and ridiculous situations into which Sally Jay is invariably drawn. Underlying it are questions about how to live and how to love. It was both funnier and more substantial than Left Bank.
The next on my Paris pile is Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Everything so far has been by American or British writers, I'd like to read some Paris based novels by French writers. Any suggestions?
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