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Book news & reviews
Le retour de Harry
TwHold on to your magic underpants, folks — Pottermania has hit France. Four months after its English-language release, Harry Potter et la coupe de feu, the fourth volume in the J.K. Rowling’s celebrated series, was released at midnight on November 29. The publisher, Gallimard Jeunesse, is pleased to announce that the incredible scenes witnessed in Britain and the States in July have been repeated over here.
The sales continue to set records and make the mind reel. Americans alone have snapped up 30 million units, Brits another 16. French sales, which began more modestly, are not far behind: the four books sold more than a million in December alone, and are firmly planted at 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the best-seller charts, streets ahead of the traditional winter leader, the Prix Goncourt, which this year went to a dense and rather elitist novel, Jean-Jacques Schuhl’s “Ingrid Caven” (also published by Gallimard). To put that in perspective, last year’s number one novel — Jean Echenoz’s Goncourt winner “Je m’en vais” (Minuit), barely reached the half a million mark, and for most editors, 5,000 copies is a best-seller.
In school playgrounds, a book has suddenly replaced Pokémon and Nintendo as the gadget to die for. Children who have never gone near a book are buying it just to be cool.
It’s almost as if Harry Potter was single-handedly introducing a whole generation of kids to the latest narrative technology — reading. You can download the software at the local FNAC, and the minimum hardware requirements are easily met: a quiet corner, a comfy chair, and hours and hours of free time (volume four is 636 pages long). Optional but not obligatory: a reader (parents will do in a pinch).
Book Reviews
“Paris aquarelles” by Fabrice Moireau (Pacifique) & "David Gentleman’s Paris" (Seven Dials)
Two magnificent, very different books of watercolors of the city. The first, in French with text by novelist Yves Simon, contains a hundred of Moireau’s intricate, wonderfully detailed works of great vistas and monuments. They are stunning compositions, though eerily devoid of people. Enter Englishman David Gentleman, whose book of Paris sketches has just been reissued. He can’t compete as a draughtsman, but his quirky pen and watercolor squiggles teem with life. Here are tramps and street sweepers, buskers and poodle-walkers, cops and exhausted tourists, all in the most splendid settings. Not many picture books capture the chaotic, preening glory of the city so well.
“The Forger” by Paul Watkins (Faber & Faber)
Occupied Paris is the setting for this atmospheric, cerebral thriller about an American painter trapped between the Nazis and the resistance. The clever plot involves Russian émigrés, forged grand masters, the Foreign Legion, a femme fatale, and a lot of cognac swilling in smoky Left Bank cafés. The descriptions of a painter at work are excellent, though the factual errors are disconcerting (we visit the Musée d’Orsay, which didn’t open until 1986!). Still, good fun, while it lasts.
“Madame de Pompadour” by Margaret Crossland (Sutton)
Subtitled “Sex, Culture and Power,” this short, snappy biography is a gently feminist take on France’s greatest mistress. Born middle class, Madame de P met Louis XV at a masked ball, and the couple — both unhappily married already — were soon inseparable. For almost 20 years Pompadour sparkled in the Versailles salons, more famous than the queen. As her beauty faded and the king went elsewhere for titillation, the whole court awaited her fall; but through charm and some serious networking, she managed to maintain her precarious station to the end.
“Mémoire des Camps,” edited by Clément Chéroux (Marval)
There exist a surprising number of photos taken in the nazi concentration and extermination camps. The best known date from the Liberation, but there are others shot for the family albums of SS guards, even a few by internees. These brutal and emotive images have long been published without dates, names or explanations. This book, the catalogue for an exhibition to be seen at the Patrimoine Photographique/Hôtel Sully (62 rue St-Antoine, 4e, tel: 01 42 74 47 75) until March 25, tries to remedy this situation; it also shows how the images have appeared in newspapers and magazines since. The four most extraordinary pictures were taken by five internees linked to the Polish resistance in August 1944. They show the gas chambers and crematorium at Auschwitz in operation, when they were killing 20,000 people a day.
“Five Hundred Self Portraits” (Phaidon)
The challenge of immortalizing their own likeness has proved irresistible to painters. This innovative and affordable book contains 500 such portraits de l’artiste. Arranged chronologically, from ancient Egypt to Gilbert and George, they are presented without commentary, in complementary pairs. Alongside the big names — Leonardo, five Durers, ten Rembrandts, four Van Goghs — are many fine unknowns, all staring out at the viewer with searching eyes. Also available in French, as 500 Autoportraits.
“Une Soirée entre Filles” (Massot)
The French edition of “Girls Night In,” a collection of short fiction by 24 young female writers, the sirens of “chick-lit.” It contains the best of the Brits plus two Frenchwomen, one Tania de Montaigne, whose first novel “Patch” is just out. Profits going to the charity War Child.
Local Authors
“Witness to the End” by Bernard W. Poirier (Univ. Press of America)
An American business consultant and writer based in Paris, Poirier helped form JFK’s defense policy from 1959 to 1963. Here he presents formerly secret chapters of the Cold War, including clandestine meetings at sea and recently declassified spy photos.
“The Eighth Day of the Week” by Alfred Kessler (Pleasure Boat)
First novel about a prominent doctor who meets a young woman in a bar and spends the evening confessing the sin that has been tearing him up for years. A dark tale of guilt and regret, poetic and high on suspense.
“An American Emigré in Paris” by Arthur Bloom (Ecrivains)
The memoirs of a Boston physician who moved to Paris in 1994. Still enthralled with the mystique of Paris, he is less kind on French bureaucrats
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