July has been one long heat wave here in southern England. Luckily, it’s a bit cooler than it was earlier in the month, and we’re developing strategies for coping with what seems to be the new normal – until it gets worse again. My main tactic has been doing very little on most days apart from sitting on the couch or reclining on a mattress with a stack of books to hand. So it’s been good for one thing (maybe two): finishing books – and watching swifts. Following on from my first set of four Paris reads, I have another four (and five more coming up before the end of the month): a teen novel about overcoming peers’ prejudice, an essay anthology about the enduring appeal of the city for authors, a fragmentary memoir composed on a phone during a bus commute, and a record of a chef’s home renovation journey from hell.

Piglettes by Clémentine Beauvais (2014; 2017)

This was my second YA novel by Beauvais (after In Paris with You); she translated both herself and her proficiency in both languages allowed her to include wordplay that might have been lost otherwise (“I finally get what it means to have l’esprit de l’escalier, when I scream to her, from the bottom of the staircase…”). Mireille LaPlanche’s former friend Malo introduced a cruel annual tradition at their high school: a “Pig Pageant” in which classmates pick the fattest, ugliest girls – including her. She decides to team up with two other finalists, Astrid and Hakima, and show their persecutors what they can do. After a period of planning and training, they undertake a week-long cycle ride from their home in Bourg-en-Bresse to Paris, timed so that they’ll arrive on Bastille Day and crash the president’s garden party. Hakima’s older brother, Kader, who lost his legs in the Iraq War and uses a wheelchair, is their chaperone. They’ve dubbed themselves the “Three Little Piglettes” and tow a trailer full of sausages that they cook and sell at each stop. Soon they’re a social media phenomenon. This sweet, funny Cinderella story about defusing fatphobia includes good diversity rep and touches on lots of issues including anxiety, bullying, and unrequited love – all with an unmistakably French enthusiasm for wine, cheese and philosophy. (Edelweiss)

A Paris All Your Own: Bestselling Women Writers on the City of Light, ed. Eleanor Brown (2017)

A reread that I started shortly after our trip to Paris in December 2023 but left half-finished on a shelf until this month. The roster of 18 contributors leans very much towards women’s fiction. While I probably most enjoyed the third of the book that was by authors I’d read and liked before – J. Courtney Sullivan, Susan Vreeland, Paula McLain, Julie Powell, Therese Anne Fowler and Maggie Shipstead – all of the pieces are cosy and undemanding. They tell of time spent living, working or travelling in the city. Sometimes it meets expectations; other times, mishaps and faux pas create disillusionment until a future visit grants a second chance. There are favourite foods and language struggles, art treasures and magical spots to discover, and stereotypes to confirm or overturn. The experience of Paris can vary based on who the travel companion is – an enthusiastic child, a needy parent or a soon-to-be ex. Fowler made her research trip before writing a biographical novel about Zelda Fitzgerald, while McLain only saw Hemingway’s haunts after she’d written The Paris Wife. Each essay finishes with a quickfire list of favourite Paris moments, books, sites, songs, etc. Not a bad substitute for being there! (Secondhand – 2nd & Charles)

My original rating (2017):

My rating now:

No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute by Lauren Elkin (2021)

Just imagine keeping a diary of your bus journeys in the Notes app of your phone for seven months and getting a book out of it. Elkin’s mostly unedited observations are based on people-watching and her own swirling thoughts in 2014–15. She covers obnoxious behaviours on public transport (the same the world over, it seems: “Oi. Manspreader. Bouge ton cul”); her teaching work; overheard conversations; and Paris as seen in different seasons. Her mind wanders across history and theory. The bus is a melting pot: She’s thrown into false intimacy with people she’s never seen before and hopes never to encounter again. Nothing much happens until it does. First it’s the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Then she falls pregnant but it’s ectopic and she loses the baby. And, after she’s switched to Métro commuting, the Hypercacher attacks. In the prologue and epilogue, Elkin talks about only understanding major events in retrospect. She also cites lockdown diaries as being a new subgenre her project fit into. But let’s be honest: if she’d not already made a name for herself as a cultural critic, this would never have been published. While it has some value as an in-the-moment historical document, I didn’t find it nearly as profound as, say Deborah Levy’s autobiography. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com with SellItBack voucher)

L’appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home by David Lebovitz (2017)

Lebovitz is a San Francisco pastry chef who moved to Paris a couple of decades ago. We get a lot of ideas from his dessert cookbook and extensive blog archive. Like The Sweet Life in Paris, this contains lighthearted musings about cultural differences between France and the US and many tantalizing recipes (most of them sweet but also a few savoury) that I am actually likely to make. But it’s primarily about the several-year saga of buying and restoring an apartment. Lebovitz had a grand plan for the kitchen, especially: a huge space with American-style appliances that would ease his cookbook writing and testing. French bureaucracy made the purchase difficult enough as the property had to be officially reregistered as residential rather than commercial, and the seller and realtor were both antagonistic.

But that was nothing compared to the nightmare of the renovation. To start with, Lebovitz was friendly with his contractor and his workers. In fact, too friendly, his partner, Romain, warned. He called the builders “tu,” brought fresh-baked treats for them, and always paid their bills promptly. They started taking liberties: hardly ever showing up, failing to meet deadlines, replying to every concern with “pas de problème” but never fixing the issues. The shoddiness and incompetence are truly astounding: counters at the wrong height, an unusable faucet, melted fuses, an electricity leak, buckled floorboards, askew windows, an upside-down water softener. Every mistake cost time and money, such that the whole job was three times longer and more expensive than projected. (A lawyer dissuaded Lebovitz from suing because in the French legal system it could take five years and not even go his way.)

Depending on your own experience, this might be cathartic, or too close to home, or a cautionary tale. (We’d already long decided we won’t do any major building projects because we can’t tolerate noise, disruption or strangers and our house is good enough for our needs.) Keep in mind that Lebovitz dealt with all this in a second language and his fortitude is impressive. Scenes at Ikea and conversations with his contractor are amusingly surreal. But I confess I did find this a little overlong and repetitive, and every setback made me cringe for him. I’ll have to bake some frangipane plum-raspberry gratins and try to forget the pain. (Secondhand – Better World Books with Little Free Library voucher)