Novels Set in Paris Book Publishing Trend

Posted on August 9, 2006

A hot trend in books right now is the novel set in Paris. Not the actual Paris, which is experiencing religious and cultural strife, but the fantastical Paris of movies and films, where anything is possible and love is always just around the corner. The New York Times examines the phenomenon.

The literary value of the English-language novels about Paris is beside the point. Paris sells. "This is clich� Paris," said Marie Babin-Burke, the buyer of new fiction for W H Smith, the English-language bookstore on the Rue de Rivoli. "People who read these books aren't interested in what really happens at different levels of society. They're into the fantasy Paris, the Paris of sophistication and magic and Champagne drinking." The display tables of W H Smith are filled with novels set in Paris, next to the guidebooks to Paris, histories of Paris and memoirs about Paris.
Alas, the plots may not surprise, the prose may not dazzle critics. But, Ms. Babin-Burke said, "even clich�s can be more than nice." Tayana in Salaam Paris, for example, has been entranced by Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina. In her two years in Paris, Sabrina had "learned how to live," Tayana says, vowing, "I must one day go to Paris too."
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Slick marketing is a feature of at least some of these books, as the covers attest. Salaam, Paris features the dark-eyed Tayana, a red-lipsticked smile piercing the sheer red veil; Paris Hangover shows a bare-legged, strapless-gowned, stiletto-shoed female figure on a bed, a pastel Eiffel Tower in the distance. In addition to the hunger-for-love-in-Paris theme, there is a midlife crisis version, which has received better reviews.
One of them is Katharine Davis�s Capturing Paris. It is the story of an American expatriate couple living an elegant life in Paris. Their lives unravel when the husband loses his job, another woman intrudes, and the wife is confronted with the collapse of the life she has built for herself in Paris.

We'll take fantasy Paris over gritty, reality-based Paris any day. At least if we're reading romance, that is. If it's a thriller, well ok. We'll take the gritty, reality-based version.