About Chantel Simmons
Our former Editorial Director firmly believes the rule, "if it's not pretty, what's the point?". And while she’s no longer updating on SweetLife, you can still find Chantel being crafty and updating pretty picks over on her SweetHome blog, Make-It Session.
Eight isn't Enough
the cherry on top canada
(Dec.10.09)
I love Paris. And not just for the street crepes shopping. When I was in university and all my friends were getting internships at magazines and TV stations that would secure them full-time gigs when we graduated, I decided to spend my final summer of freedom as an au pair in Paris. Probably not a smart career move, but it was an amazing life experience I've never regretted. So when Deirdre Kelly's debut book, Paris Times Eight: Finding Myself in the City of Dreams, came across my desk, I swapped it for the novel I had on the go, and tucked into it, instantly relating to her story that starts with Kelly's first trip to Paris, also as an au pair. At the time, Kelly was, as she calls herself, a "wide-eyed ingenue", and rightly so -- she was only 19 and transported from her hometown of Toronto to the centre of Paris. At one point she writes: "I should've been enjoying myself, should've been relishing my first time in Paris as a young woman. But instead I too often worried about doing and saying the right things. I felt this mostly when confined to the apartment, with its strange menage a trois brewing inside its stuffy rooms. Outside that oppressive apartment I liked my relationship with Paris. I pursued a growing relationship with the city itself. I found that if I let it, Paris could seduce me, make me feel alluring."
That quote sets up Kelly's coming-of-age memoir that chronicles her relationship with Paris through eight trips to the city over a 30-year span -- including the time her mother accompanies her, highlighting their tumultuous relationship set against the backdrop of the terrorist street bombings of the mid-80s to the final chapter, in which Kelly brings her two young children to experience the city for the first time. In a style that reminded me of author Melissa Bank's The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, it's Kelly's ability to capture her sense of self at each stage in her life and share her true emotion with the reader.
I couldn't put the book down.
Want to know more? Read my interview with Deirdre Kelly, then leave a comment to be entered to win your own copy of Paris Times Eight.