Paris at the End of the World

March 1, 2014
Australian transplant and longtime Paris resident Baxter (The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, 2011) has spent years trying to discover what it was that changed his grandfather so much when he returned from World War I. Grandpa Archie left his young family, rejected his former job and never mentioned the war; he only occasionally said, ca ne fait rien (it makes no difference). Was he injured; did he suffer or commit horrors; did he desert; did he fall in love? During his many years in Paris, the author only found a few facts with the help of a military historian. Within Archie's story, the author intersperses descriptions of Paris and its artistic occupants during the Great War. For most Parisians, French or not, the war didn't seem real; it was a show, entertainment for their picnics. Most residents were only concerned with the moment. Despite shortages, the theater muddled on, dinner parties were noted for the clever conversations rather than the cooking, and bombs were mostly ignored. Only the French could make austerity chic. "Far from rejecting pain," he writes, "[Paris] embraced it, transformed it." Throughout the narrative, Baxter jumps back and forth to England, where the Australian forces were based before traveling to the front and returned for recovery. The no-nonsense Aussies were quick to start a fight and didn't take any guff from anyone, even officers, and the botched leadership at the beginning of the war would no doubt have caused a mutiny. This book is as much about searching for Grandpa Archie's life as it is about Paris and England during the war. In lesser hands, the narrative could have easily become confusing, even boring, but Baxter carries it off with aplomb. An enjoyable, swift read, and the author's final solution to Archie's wartime dilemma makes it as fun as a work of historical fiction.

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April 15, 2014
Part memoir, part history, and part cultural travelog, this accessible titile captures the sights, sounds, and feel of Paris through brief vignettes on a variety of themes. Baxter, a film biographer, critic, and author of four best-selling memoirs about life in France, uses his Australian grandfather's diaries to present a soldier's view of life during the war. This richly illustrated volume portrays the euphoria of the war's first days; the way buildings and transport vehicles were adapted to house and carry the wounded; French attitudes toward the Germans and Americans in their midst; the vices and sex trade that provided diversions for soldiers and visitors; even the thriving postcard business that emerged to send news back home. VERDICT General readers and Francophiles will enjoy this breezy look at life in the City of Light during the Great War.--Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

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April 15, 2014
On the eve of WWI in 1914, Paris was still in the midst of the Belle Epoque, that glittering cultural explosion that encompassed the efforts of such icons as Picasso, Gauguin, and Stravinsky. Baxter, a film biographer and longtime Paris resident, asserts that the Great War bruised but did not destroy the epoch. His rambling but absorbing narrative captures the contradictions of daily life in the city. Paris was almost on the front line, since German forces were often only 40 miles away. A varied and constant influx of Allied soldiers sometimes enriched and sometimes disturbed the lives of Parisians. Occasional bombardments by German heavy artillery terrified residents, and regular fears of a German breakthrough kept the city on edge. Yet, Baxter stresses that most citizens, including the most creative ones, managed to pursue normal activities. Baxter's reliance on letters of his grandfather, a soldier who spent time in Paris during the war, provide a personal poignancy to this well-done portrait of a city he knows and loves.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)