Oh, friends, I tried reading this for Paris in July. For discussion with my mother who finished it early this June. I even highlighted certain passages with interesting facts about Paris: Montmartre, the Latin Quarter, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower and the Place d'Invalides. Places I've walked through numerous times as a child and a young woman. But, I couldn't get past the first hundred pages.
The reason? It's because the characters are so contrived to fit into Paris' history that I could not care about them. The sentences about them seemed stilted, their emotions were empty, and their dialog was forced.
Sadly, I can only count one book read for Paris in July. I hope to do better next year. For now I'm off to Japan to see what's going on in Yasunari Kawabata's House of Sleeping Beauties.
