A Piece of French History

Tatiana de Rosnay's historical fiction Sarah's Key has been on the New York Times bestseller for over a year, so I'm sure most of you have either read it or read of it. The book's main character Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris with her French husband, is researching an historical event called the Vel d'Hiv. On the morning of July 16, 1942, French police swept through Paris and arrested over 13,000 Jews, including children. Initially the prisoners were held in an indoor bicycle stadium called the Velodrome d'Hiver in appalling conditions, and subsequently were transported to Auschwitz. It was especially shocking that it was the collaborating French police themselves, not the Nazis, who organized the raid, and that the non-Jewish Parisians quickly occupied the emptied apartments without asking too many questions.

In the course of her research Julia discovers a connection between her husband's family and Sarah Starzinsky, a ten year-old Jewish girl who was taken to the velodrome with her parents. The novel then alternates between Sarah's story and Julia's. Sarah's story is suspenseful, poignant and emotionally powerful, and de Rosnay does an excellent job of weaving historical events into the tight plot.

But unfortunately the other half of the story is about Julia, and here's where the chick lit clichés spoiled my enjoyment of this book Her husband is an arrogant boor (how very French), her sisters-in-law don't like her, her marriage is on shaky ground. The plot takes a few interesting twists as Julia tries to trace Sarah's path, but will it surprise you to learn that in the process she also finds true love? Or that “Sarah's Key” is soon to be a major motion picture? (It could be worse; at least Julia will be played by Kristin Scott-Thomas and not Julia Roberts).

I was fascinated to learn about Vel d'Hiv, I was riveted by Sarah's suspenseful story, but I'm disappointed that de Rosnay felt it necessary to tell us about yet another plucky gal battling the odds to find true love.

Sex and Love in Paris

I'm reading about Paris in preparation for a trip, so when I found a little surprise in a used bookstore, I couldn't resist. John Baxter is an Australian writer who has written a number of biographies of actors and directors and film. He spent time as a screenwriter and teacher in the U.S., then moved to France where he married a French woman and has been living there for roughly 15 years. His book, We'll Always Have Paris is aptly subtitled Sex and Love in the City of Light. This small book is a very clever and funny at times, providing an audacious exploration into French culture, with particular emphasis on the sexual practices of the French. He takes you to small bookstores, cafes and brothels where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dali, Edward VII, Dietrich and others held court and pursued their appetites. He is a very witty and literate writer who uses frequent references to famous artists, authors, and movie scenes which spice up his tales. Not your typical tourbook, and not a character driven novel either, but a spicy combination of short tales of contemporary encounters and historical reports that provide surprises along the way. Though not a "substantial" or "serious" work, he provides some humorous diversion for the curious who may be interested in an usual memoir of life abroad in the City of Light.

Love in the Time of Enlightenment

If I were playing Jeopardy a month ago and the category were The Enlightenment, I wouldn’t have done very well.

For $100: Voltaire
Answer: Who wrote Candide?
For $200: Emilie du Chatelet
Answer: (That’s the buzzer sounding – and me losing).

But now that I have read Passionate Minds by David Bodanis (he also wrote E = mc2) I would have many answers including: Who translated Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica from its original Latin into French? This work and her commentaries were instrumental in advancing the concept of the conservation of energy and fundamental to key eighteenth-century developments in theoretical physics.

If this sounds boring, I can assure you that it is anything but boring. To say that Voltaire and Emilie were lover and mistress vastly understates the contribution of each to the other. Throughout their relationship Emilie was married to someone else but that did not prevent Voltaire and Emilie from living together for years at a time (and from periodically having affairs with others). But they always returned to each other. No one else satisfied their intellectual and spiritual needs like the other. Bodanis paints a vivid picture of life in and around Paris and Versailles in the first half of the eighteenth century, particularly among the aristocracy. And he describes their artistic and scientific achievements in readily understandable terms.

I knew that I would like Emilie because early in this book her father is quoted as saying: “I argued with her in vain, yet she would not understand that no great lord will marry a woman who is seen reading every day.” Because her father’s low income would not provide enough funds to buy all of the books that she wanted, she taught herself to count cards at the gaming tables and won sufficient sums to support her “book” habit. Much later in life when she had accumulated a significant amount of gambling debt, she devised a form of derivatives, contracting with the tax collectors to pay them a small sum of money now for the right to receive their future streams of collections. She then used those contracts to satisfy her debts. This is 1747!

One could describe this as a history book. In addition to Voltaire and Emilie, we meet Richilieu, Diderot, Frederick the Great, Madame de Pompadour, Bernoulli, and Louis XV, among many others. But it is primarily a love story – and a good one.
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