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    A Year in Paris: Season by Season in the City of Light
    A Year in Paris: Season by Season in the City of Light
    A Year in Paris: Season by Season in the City of Light
    Audiobook7 hours

    A Year in Paris: Season by Season in the City of Light

    Written by John Baxter

    Narrated by Graham Halstead

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    About this audiobook

    From the incomparable John Baxter, the bestselling author of The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, a sumptuous and definitive portrait of Paris through the seasons, highlighting the unique tastes, sights, and changing personality of the city in spring, summer, fall, and winter.

    “A man with a great appreciation of what makes Paris tick.”— Newsday

    When the common people of France revolted in 1789, one of the first ways they chose to correct the excesses of the monarchy and the church was to rename the months of the year. Selected by poet and playwright Philippe-Francois-Nazaire Fabre, these new names reflected what took place at that season in the natural world; Fructidor was the month of fruit, Floréal that of flowers, while the winter wind (vent) dominated Ventôse.

    Though the names didn’t stick, these seasonal rhythms of the year continue to define Parisians, as well as travelers to the city. As acclaimed author and long-time Paris resident John Baxter himself recollects, “My own arrival in France took place in Nivôse, the month of snow, and continued in Pluviôse, the season of rain. To someone coming from Los Angeles, where seasons barely existed, the shock was visceral. Struggling to adjust, I found reassurance in the literature, music, even the cuisine of my adoptive country, all of which marched to the inaudible drummer of the seasons.”

    Devoting a section of the book to each of Fabre’s months, Baxter draws upon Paris’s literary, cultural and artistic past to paint an affecting, unforgettable portrait of the city. Touching upon the various ghosts of Paris past, from Hemingway and Zelda Fitzgerald, to Claude Debussy to MFK Fisher to Francois Mitterrand, Baxter evokes the rhythms of the seasons in the City of Light, and the sense of wonder they can arouse for all who visit and live there.

    A melange of history, travel reportage, and myth, of high culture and low, A Year in Paris is vintage John Baxter: a vicarious thrill ride for anyone who loves Paris.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 26, 2019
    ISBN9780062896629
    Author

    John Baxter

    John Baxter is a film critic, novelist, biographer and broadcaster, whose books on the cinema include ‘The Hollywood Exiles’, ‘The Cinema of John Ford’, and highly praised biographies of Ken Russell, Fellini, Bunuel, ‘Steven Spielberg’ and ‘Stanley Kubrick’. His biography of ‘Woody Allen’ was published by HarperCollins in November 1998.

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    • 4/5
      A creatively seductive insight into the history and culture of Paris mixed into personal memoir in a style that flits chapter by chapter between different subjects. While most of it follows an understandable thread, some of the changes of subject seem forced.

      The narration is very well done, with changes of voice and a performance that matches the witry tone of the book. However, if you would like to learn some of the place and personal names discussed (and you're not a native French speaker) I might recommend reading this rather than listening.