The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

Read by Clare Corbett, Daphne Kouma, Julia Winwood, Sope Dirisu, Sofia Zervudachi

12 hours, 53 minutes

Published February 2022 by HarperCollins

Publisher's Summary: 

Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up – to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? – he’s not there.

The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.

The socialite – The nice guy – The alcoholic – The girl on the verge – The concierge

Everyone's a neighbor. Everyone's a suspect. And everyone knows something they’re not telling.

My Thoughts: 

Sometimes when I finish an audiobook, I look at what's available from what's on my TBR list. Sometimes I'm just looking for something that will suit the reading mood I'm in. Which is a pretty good way to increase your chances of enjoying a book, especially when you're familiar with the author. I'm certain picking this one because of my reading mood increased my enjoyment of it. Even though I had some issues with it, in the end, it gave me just what I was hoping to get. 

Jess has had a tough life. As a young girl, she found her addict mother dead. Her half-brother Ben, the only person she has ever really been attached to, is taken into a well-to-do family and lives a life that has no room for Jess. Still, Ben is the person she turns to when she's done something really stupid and needs to leave England and when she calls him as she arrives in Paris, he agrees to let her stay with him for a while. Yet when she arrives at the apartment building, Ben isn't answering his phone and isn't in the apartment she can't believe he can possibly afford. 

There are only a few apartments in the building and Jess soon gets to know all of the residents, including the caretaker, and all of the nooks and crannies of the building, including a hidden stairwell. Only Nick, who was Ben's friend, feels like someone Jess can trust and she needs an ally. But as we bounce back and forth between narrators, we soon learn that Jess doesn't know the first thing about any of the people who live in that building and finding Ben is going to be dangerous. 

I'm glad I listened to this one; the multiple readers really worked well. I did wonder, at times, if Jess wasn't a little too quick to trust, for a girl who had grown up on the rougher side of life. But I really like the "locked-room" feel of this one and was completely taken by surprise by the two big twists toward the end of the book. My biggest issue with the book was the "tying up the knots" ending - it felt a little too easy for me. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this one a lot. 

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl 

288 pages

Published April 2024 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Stella reached for an oyster, tipped her head, and tossed it back. It was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean. Oysters, she thought. Where have they been all my life?

When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual inheritance: a one-way plane ticket and a note reading “Go to Paris.” Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a traumatic childhood has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. But when her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.

Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store, where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella and for the first time in her life Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress—and embarks on an adventure.

Her first stop: the iconic brasserie Les Deux Magots, where Stella tastes her first oysters and then meets an octogenarian art collector who decides to take her under his wing. As Jules introduces Stella to a veritable who’s who of the Paris literary, art, and culinary worlds, she begins to understand what it might mean to live a larger life.

As weeks—and many decadent meals—go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed” at famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past. A feast for the senses, this novel is a testament to living deliciously, taking chances, and finding your true home.

My Thoughts: 

I've thoroughly enjoyed Ruth Reichl's nonfiction work and was really looking forward to seeing what she would do with a work of fiction. Of course, it's not a surprise that she would choose Paris for a setting, nor is it a surprise that food plays a major role. I chose this one for my book club to read and it was, by and large, a hit. In fact, I think everyone else liked it much more than I did. 

I had a lot of issues with it, to be honest. There's a scene, very early on, that should have come with a trigger warning. Given that she chose to include it, I expected it to play a much bigger role later in the book, but when I finished the book, I felt it could have, very easily, been left out entirely or at least have been minimized. 

Then there's the fact that once Stella, who has never had any real interest in food and prefers a plain meal, can suddenly discern all the flavors in a dish once she's introduced to food by a real Parisian. I know that some people are born with the ability to taste many more flavors than others of us can, but for her to be able to name them without ever having had them was a stretch. In fact, a lot of the book required a lot of suspension of disbelief. Like Stella having a boss that was ok with her extending her stay by months. 

Despite all of that, the writing about food was, as you would expect, divine and Reichl's love of fashion also comes front and center. As someone who studied fashion merchandising in college, I was familiar with the designers, the fabrics, the styles and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And, I will admit, I did come to long for Stella to find happiness and the family she had never really had (which, of course, we know she will, eventually, even when we can't figure out how she'll get there). 

The Titanic Survivors Book Club by Timothy Schaffert

The Titanic Survivors Book Club by Timothy Schaffert

320 pages

Published April 2024 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship’s second-class library. But the day the Titanic set sail he was left stranded at the dock.

After the ship’s sinking, Yorick takes this twist of fate as a sign to follow his lifelong dream of owning a bookshop in Paris. Soon after, he receives an invitation to a secret society of survivors where he encounters other ticket holders who didn’t board the ship. Haunted by their good fortune, they decide to form a book society, where they can grapple with their own anxieties through heated discussions of The Awakening or The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Of this ragtag group, Yorick finds himself particularly drawn to the glamorous Zinnia and the mysterious Haze, and a tangled triangle of love and friendship forms among them. Yet with the Great War on the horizon and the unexpected death of one of their own, the surviving book club members are left wondering what fate might have in store.

Elegant and elegiac, The Titanic Survivors Book Club is a dazzling ode to love, chance, and the transformative power of books to bring people together.

My Thoughts: 

I've been a fan of Schaffert's since 2010, when I first met him at Omaha Lit Fest, an event he organized and which I very much enjoyed attending for several years. The Titanic Survivors Book Club is the sixth of his books that I've read and very much enjoyed. I still count his The Coffins of Little Hope as one of my favorites, but his writing has expanded far beyond the Nebraska borders of that book. 

What I Liked About This Book:

• When you read the title of the book, you are definitely expecting a book about a group of people that managed to get into lifeboats as the Titanic sank into icy waters. These are not those survivors, which is makes them so interesting and so bound to one another. 
• The core of this book is the trio of Yorick, Zinnia and Haze and their trio of love stories. Such interesting and unusual characters. I loved how they both made each other better and broke each other apart. 
• Paris...the book store...the clothing and food and drinks. Schaffert is a master at creating atmosphere and painting a picture. I would love to see this book made into a movie so I could see all of this come to life...assuming Hollywood could do the writing, and the image I've created in my head, justice. 
• There is an epistolary section of the book which was an interesting interlude and allowed readers to see the story from many angles. 
• There is always a darkness to Schaffert's writing that draws me in; this one may be the darkest. But they also always contain an amount of humor (which, if you've ever seen Schaffert speak, will not surprise you). 
• I've remarked on this before and I will again with this book - there are no "happily ever afters" in Schaffert's books and that's just as it should be.

What Didn't Work As Well For Me: 

• I would have liked to see more the meetings of the book club. So many interesting characters to learn more about. 
• Of course, a book set just after the sinking of the Titanic was going to reach the point where the First World War began and these characters were pulled into it. That was logical, but I felt a little bit like it pulled me away from story that I'd been enjoying and the aftermath of what happened in the war was a slow collapse before things came back together. 

All in all, a very satisfying book that gave me exactly what I was expecting from Schaffert. I miss his books set in Nebraska but I'm also thrilled to watch him explore the wider world and its history.