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A Paris Apartment

This book counts for the following Reading Challenges:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

A Paris Apartment is based on a true story that recently came to light: in 2010 I believe, a 7-room apartment was discovered in Paris, 9th arrondissement. No one had entered it in 70 years, and it was crammed with precious pieces of furniture from all kinds of periods and provenances, that the family finally wanted to auction.

This historical novel features April Vogt, PhD in art history, an American furniture assessor working for the Sotheby company. She is urgently called by her boss to go spend the month of June in Paris to prepare that auction. It might be also a good time to get away for a while from her husband Troy. After 7 years of married life, their situation is rather shaky.
When April enters the apartment, she not only finds amazing furniture, but also a painting her expert eye recognizes right away as a work of the most famous portraitist of La Belle Époque, Giovanni Boldini, and even more intriguing: a bunch of letters dating back to 1898. Avidly reading these letters, April connects deeply with this mysterious woman, Marthe de Florian, and finds in this unique experience messages for her own life. Let me tell you why this was such an amazing historical novel.

First, I really enjoyed how the author manages the connection between April’s present life and the 19the century: the flashbacks happen as April reads Marthe’s letters, and the transitions are always smoothly brought in. So instead of having abrupt changes from one chapter to the next, as is often the case, here one period leads naturally to the other.

I also enjoyed a lot Marthe’s character. She ends up being a courtesan meeting lots of very famous and colorful characters people in her life, artists as well as politicians.
Through her diary, you get a nice portrait of life at Les Folies Bergères, as she worked there as a barmaid; of the beginning of the famous restaurant Maxim’s; of the 1900 Exposition Universelle. You thus get a nice flavor of life in Paris at the time.

Marthe is so funny, and her critical eye is irresistible, for instance against Picasso; and the American absence of taste in art!
I really had great laughs reading her letters, especially as she speaks about the Hugos and Daudets, and mostly Marcel Proust.
You may remember I’m reading finally all of À la recherche du temps perdu (book 5 out of 7 right now), so of course my attention was piqued, and I can’t resist sharing with you what Marthe had to tell in her diary on Proust:

I also meet painters and poets, and writers, even pseudo writers such as that gossip-monger Marcel Proust. He thinks himself a master of words when he does nothing more than write a society column. What a bore he is!
p.76

And later on:

Proust told me… As delectable a piece of gossip as that is, I have a hard time believing it. Everyone knows Proust is filled with merde almost all of the time.
p.179

And finally:

Proust claims himself a writer but it is little more than the city’s smallest rumor mill… Proust acts like a female better than most girls around. He was created with the entirely wrong sexual organs!
p.238

You will have to come back later to read Michelle Gable’s interview to know what SHE really thinks of Proust!

The author managed to create true to life and very diverse characters. April is certainly very different from Marthe, yet elements of her own life, her relationship with her parents, connect her deeply to this woman from the 19th century.

Getting to know Marthe at a deeper level, April has to fight to be sure Marthe gets the auction she deserves, where she will be recognized for who she was. But to achieve this, April needs to fight the commercial interests of her own company. Will she be feisty enough?

The descriptions of Paris and French food were awesome, and made me wishing to be transported there right as I was reading the book.
And there’s the typical very flirtatious French attorney, Olivier… Quite annoying for April at first. Will she manage though to resist his charm?

I also enjoyed a lot the big surprises coming about family relationships, how Marthe, Jeanne Daudet, and Agnès Vanier, you will have to discover who is she, are all related.

The final scene of the auction itself was beautiful, with more surprise about why actually this auction was requested.

The only things I did not appreciate were a few problems with the French language, for instance Marguerite most often written as Marguérite, and the adjective used in the masculine form, heureux [pronounce: eureu], instead of the feminine form heureuse [eureuzz] when talking about Marthe.

I will soon post an interview of the author! Be sure to come back, it should be really good!

VERDICT: In the company of the furniture assessor April, go spend a month in Paris and get to know with her a remarkable woman who lived their at the end of the 19th century. This fascinating historical novel will open a new world to you, with messages that may give you a new lease on life.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
Any other good historical novel you read set in Paris?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

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