Paris

Strasser fills her book with lovely inspirational and historical quotes and illustrations, but perhaps the most helpful things about it are the informational boxes in which she gives the reader helpful tips on how to achieve many of the looks within: tints and washes, dying fabrics, wall stencils, drapes & valances, duvet covers, reupholstering, rinceau, furniture refinishing, flea market savvy, restoring a chandelier, etc. These boxes, for me, truly make this book "Romantic Decor on a Flea Market Budget," as they show the reader how to *make* many of the items in the book. Books that feature flea-market finds usually only take their readers halfway, as once the readers are at the flea-market it lies upon to fate for the perfect objects to cross their paths. *The Paris Apartment,* however, demonstrates to its readers techniques that allow them to take control of at least some parts of their decorative destiny. It is certainly possible to pay someone to do these things or to go out and buy a $600 duvet cover, but it is infinitely cheaper to do them oneself.

Something about Strasser's tone in the text *does,* however, occasionally make one feel as though she is a bit amateur-ish. Part of me wanted to feel as though there were a slightly more authoritative voice behind this book and its ideas. However, I also believe that the authoritative voice one might feel as though the book lacked on occasion is in some ways in opposition to the free-flowing concepts of creatively exploring one's own decorative style that *The Paris Apartment* embodies. The book, in some ways, rejects "authority" and serves, instead, as "decorative friend," making the reader feel as though s/he is exploring his or her own taste with a fellow adventurer in the decorative arts.

Having said that, this is a perfect book for someone who is especially creative and artistic. I already had an idea of what I wanted, and had decorated quite a bit. However this book really gave me a reference.

If you are willing to look, and are up for a search you can decorate for less the $1,800 but you do have to put effort into the hunt. Flea Markets, Garage Sales, Discount stores like TJ MAXX and Ross's if you have them in your area have been a wonderful source for me.

If you are a romantic and a dreamer -- this book is for you

The "smoking gun" is an old photograph Aimee discovers in her investigation, which leads her to uncover a power conspiracy going back to Nazi Germany. The twists and turns of the plot will keep you up very late....

The characters are well-written and include both major and minor players to the story. If you've been to Paris, her descriptions of the city, its streets and people will bring back vivid memories. Paris is not only the City of Light here, but a city harboring dark secrets and hidden history.

C'est super! Encore, Cara Black! Looking forward to MURDER IN BELLEVILLE.

Certain elements about the story are not so strong - Black needs to think about the continuity of the story - I am not the only one to re-read several sections because the story makes unexplained jumps. I do not want to be fussy, but only 750FF ($120) per day (even in 1993) for a top computer security detective AND her 'legendary' assistant? It is not surprising that her agency has serious financial problems!

I hope to see the next novel sometime soon, as I am sure that the minor problems of continuity in the first can be rectified. I am not sure what Leduc will do, having saved the world from Nazism in her first adventure!

No, I do not mind that the book is darker than the previous ones in the series. It fits the story. I love the growth and development of the characteters, so no complaints there. I can even handle a cliffhanger as much as I personally detest them. I hate waiting at least a year for a resolution in books I read primarily for entertainment.

What I didn't like was the constant change of narrator in the book. Yes, I understand it was necessary, considering the inevitable cliffhanger. Yes, I even like Pink (or whatever you want to call her). But although she is vastly different in personality from Nell, her narrative voice is not sufficiently different. I kept having to keep the narrative clues straight as to who was speaking, since the voices were all too similar. It's not that I was confused, but I had to work too hard to read the book just to keep the narrators straight, let alone the clues and story developments. It was horrific when I had to put the book down for a break and come back and figure out who was speaking before I could become immersed in the story. The narrative clues are dense, actually, and also slowed the flow of the story. It was as if the editor knew the voices were not different enough so we were peppered with narrative clues, not mystery clues, since the conceit had to be maintained to obtain the ending.

Still, Irene is back, and so is Nell. If you love them, reread the other books and venture onto this one. If you haven't read the former books, please start with them. Nell is a jewel, a Dr. Watson and an Archie Goodwin rolled all into a Victorian woman. Don't miss her. I love her. I just wish the book had been more about her again than Irene. Irene is wonderful, but Nell is the true heroine. Nell humanizes Irene's perfections.

If you also enjoy Holmes tempered with a strong female character, I highly recommend Laurie R. King's "The Beekeeper's Apprentice."

#1. The suspect in the story (read it yourself, Mac!) is a genuine Jack-the-Ripper suspect, and considered by many to actually BE the Ripper. He had murdered his wife and was an escapee (or more likely let go) from a madhouse.

#2. The Ripper murders have always been claimed to show some religious or occult symbol, authors vary on what. Me, the ol' Raven is like The Great Randi, skeptic unparalleled, who points out that any pattern is only possible if you connect the dots that way.

#3. Pink. Yes, that was her nickname, and her name as given in the book is her real one. But no one remembers her by that name, since she is world-famous under a pseudonym. I won't say what it was, but if I did all of you would slap your forehead and say "Oh, yeah! I've heard of her!" You probably think Mark Twain was his real name too.

As for the story ending midstream, do you really want an 800 page book? There's just too much to tell in one story. So read Castle Rouge. It'll pay. Quoth the Raven...

That said, I'm a bit tired of the much older man/much younger woman theme. I also found Kurt Brauer a bit inadequate as a villian.
What REALLY annoyed me was the breaks in continuity - how can Brianne be told Pierce's age early in the book and later say she doesn't have any idea how old he is? Also going from Savannah to Virginia by private jet on page 298 and then to Charleston SC on page 302-303 when driving by limo to Washington DC was so incredible that I almost tossed the book out - except I wanted to know how it ended.

In summary, a good romance between likable characters made less enjoyable by annoying errors.

'Once in Paris' is a tale about two people who run into each other and fall in love, but neither will admit the mindblowing fact.
Pierce Hutton was too grief stricken and empty to realize there was life after his spouce's death. Coming to his rescue one night in the city, Brianne Martin, an 18 year old kid in school who seems to let him know without words that life can go on.
She was far too young for him and she knew he was too old for her, but their hearts didn't know the difference.
A year later, Brianne is caught in a web of political scandal and her stepfather is about to turn her over to a man who has no scrupples. He simply wants her and will have her at any cost. Never forgetting that night in Paris, Pierce comes to her rescue and leads them into an adventure she never dreamed filled with danger and chaos.
Can she heal his broken soul? Can he save her from a madman bent on destroying her?

Tracy Talley~@

But I especially like the fact that Ms. Palmer included characters from a previous book: "Tate Winthrop" and "Cecily." If I'm not mistaken, they were first introduced in "After Midnight" written under the name of "Susan Kyle." I was intrigued by the glimpses of these two and had wondered what happened to them. Too bad I have to wait until December for the release of "Paper Rose" for their full story!

I've always loved cross-over stories. Speaking of which, does anyone know if there was a book about Brianne's friend "Cara Harvey"? Since she was mentioned several times in this book, with references to her problems with a "gentleman," I was wondering if she had a separate story.

The main character is a late-middle-aged widower named Lambert Strether who edits a local periodical in the town of Woollett, Massachussetts, and is a sort of factotum for a wealthy industrialist's widow named Mrs. Newsome, a woman he may possibly marry. Strether's latest assignment from Mrs. Newsome is to go to Paris to convince her son, Chad, to give up what she assumes is a hedonistic lifestyle and return to Woollett to marry a proper, respectable young lady, his brother-in-law's sister to be specific. There is a greater ulterior motive, too -- the prosperity of the family business relies on Chad's presence.

In Paris, Strether finds that Chad has surrounded himself with a more stimulating group of friends, including a mousy aspiring painter named John Little Bilham, and that he is in love with an older, married woman named Madame de Vionnet. Providing companionship and counsel to Strether in Paris are his old friend, a retired businessman named Waymarsh, and a woman he met in England, named Maria Gostrey, who happens to be an old schoolmate of the Madame's. When it appears that Strether is failing in his mission to influence Chad, Mrs. Newsome dispatches her daughter and son-in-law, Jim and Sarah (Newsome) Pocock, and Jim's marriageable sister Mamie, to Paris to apply pressure. Ultimately, Strether, realizing that he's blown his chances with Mrs. Newsome and that Chad has the right idea anyway, finds himself enjoying the carefree life in Paris, which has liberated him from his lonely, stifling existence in Woollett.

Not having cared much for James's previous work "The Wings of the Dove," I felt something click with "The Ambassadors." Maybe it's because I found the story a little more absorbing and could empathize with Strether; maybe it's because my reading skills are maturing and I'm learning to appreciate James's dense, oblique prose style. I realize now that, for all the inherent difficulty in his writing, literature took a giant step forward with Henry James; if the Novel is, as he claimed, "the most independent, most elastic, most prodigious of literary forms," it takes a writer like James to show us how.

White takes us into HIS Paris, a city he has lived in for many, many years. As an American, the city will naturally feel different to him than it might to a native. White's writing is, as always, graceful and beautiful. His assessment of Colette, his desription of "nationalism" among the Jews of Paris, and, certainly, his thoughts on Homosexuality and specifically HIV in this city are important and fascinating. I also especially enjoyed the short appendix on "further reading."

It surprised me that a few of the other reviewers were taken aback that White would spend so much of his time on gay Parisian life. This has always been a subject for White...in his novels, his memoirs and in his non-fiction works. Hire Julia Child to write about Paris and we're bound to get a book filled with thoughts on food. By the way, a "flaneur," we are told, is a person who walks, strolls for the purpose of walking or strolling...not with any "ulterior" motive. RECOMMENDED

The format of this book is very small which means it would fit into the back pocket of any tourist visiting the City of Light who longs for much more insight than pocket guides from tour companies can even suggest. White writes as well in books like this and his bios of Genet, Proust etc as he does in his inimitable novels. This is a little treasure of a book!

I'm not a professional, but the book seems very poorly written. It doesn't flow; it's a struggle to get through; the characters are not accessible; it's very "choppy"; it's cold; and unpleasant to read. Throughout the book, the author just tried too hard, and it's painfully obvious. I couldn't wait to stop reading it. How unfortunate, because the story idea was not half-bad.

Just in case there is a reprint being planned, I think it should read "piqued" instead of "You've peaked my interest.." on page 89.

The book also would have benefitted from a careful reading by an editor before publication. This might have eliminated sentences such as, "I was hesitant to return the preceding day to check on the princess, as I feared a repeat of the following incident." It reads even worse in context.

After talking with "the Girlfriends", Lara decides to go anyway. But then she impulsively invites Dan, the younger man who is repairing her deck, to go with her. He does and what an adventure it is!

From overbooked flights, hotel reservations not held, bad weather and "someone" not being able to read a map correctly and all the other mishaps that can happen on a vacation to wonderful finds when they just "go with the flow", its a great read for us.

The author visited all the places in France that are in the book and it shows. It's a wonderful, imaginative escape with some surprises on the way.

Pick it up and let some wonderful writing take you to France and a great adventure.

If the book had been longer, I think I would have enjoyed it more. I liked her look at French femininity and childrearing and I would have like to have read more about why and how she
decided the stay in Paris, her cross-cultural courtship with her husband, what she loves about Paris, and uniquely French manners.

Personally, unlike several of the other reviewers, I found her discussions of female Parisian behavior interesting. In my 20-something East Coast world, women are often more talkative
and expressive than men, so it was interesting to hear how, in the author's experience French women do not take the lead in discussions. As I am used to a certain solidarity among
American women, it was interesting to read that Parisian women do not share this trait. The author didn't make me think that French women are doormats, merely that their social
behavior differs from than of the American women I know. I didn't find the author to be a militant feminist at all, though perhaps these observations about female behavior are more
interesting to women than men.

I also found that she had nearly as many negative stereotypes about Americans as she did about Parisians. An okay, but not great book about Paris. I would have given it three or
four stars if it had been longer.

This book is now standard issue in our family for any friends who come to stay with us in France. Five stars for entertainment and practical information. Let's hope there is a sequel.