A Year in Paris

December 15, 2018
A longtime resident of Paris muses on the city he loves.As in previous similar books, Baxter (Montparnasse: Paris's District of Memory and Desire, 2017, etc.) proves to be an amiable guide to Paris, where he has lived for nearly 30 years. Evoking history, literature, observations on nature, and digressions on food, customs, and culture, the author ambles through the city, conveying his heartfelt admiration for the French way of life. "We who live in Paris are used to living by the weather and the seasons," he writes. Unlike America, where New York's supermarkets feature strawberries in January, the French eagerly anticipate asparagus, stone fruit, and wintry stews at just the right moment. In food, "as in most things, the essence of pleasure resides in timing." Baxter anchors his Parisian rambles with a tale of the Republican calendar, devised by Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Églantine, an actor and self-promoter who became George Danton's private secretary. Given the task of updating the calendar, beginning in 1792, immodestly designated Year One, Fabre lengthened the hour from 60 to 100 minutes and extended the week from 7 days to 10. Three weeks made a month, and each month was named to reflect the natural world: Floréal, the month of flowers; Prairial, for meadows; Vendemiaire, for the harvest; Nivôse, a winter month, when it snowed--in Paris, but not in the sunny south; followed by Pluviôse, when it rained; and Ventôse, when the winds blew. The calendar was generally ignored, and Fabre met his fate at the guillotine. For Baxter, however, there was something poetic about evoking in the name of the month "the sensual possibilities of the greatest country in the world." Besides reprising France's bloody revolutions, the author creates assorted vignettes of Paris past and present: mimes and buskers, politicians' links to nature (Mitterand preferred roses, Chirac, apples), the inspiration for the song "April in Paris," the city's various public pools, and the urban legend of a subterranean crocodile.A quirky, affectionate portrait by an unabashed Francophile.

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February 1, 2019

In the wake of the French Revolution, the victorious leaders decided to create an entirely new calendar, one based on nature, with months named for wind and rain and days named for fruit and flowers. Baxter (The Perfect Meal), a longtime resident of Paris, weaves the story of the Revolutionary calendar with snippets of French history and vignettes of contemporary life in the City of Light. He relates the story of Fabre d'églantine, the playwright and con man with "friends in high places," whose task it was to create the new calendar, and how his misunderstanding of the way that French life is inextricably intertwined with the seasons of the year eventually contributed to his downfall. The Republican calendar was in effect from 1793 until 1806, outliving its creator, who was guillotined in 1794. Baxter alternates the tale of d'églantine and the calendar with his experiences of France, and Parisian culture with its deep connection to the seasons. VERDICT Part history, part memoir, part travelog, this book has something for everyone. Of special interest to those who hope to visit Paris.--Rachel Owens, Daytona State Coll. Lib., FL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2019
The decidedly northern latitude of Paris, with its marked variation in daylight hours from one month to the next, makes the city especially sensitive to seasonal changes. Australian Baxter (Montmartre, 2018) moved to Paris to marry, and he's become acutely aware of this cyclical phenomenon. Make no mistake: Baxter is less interested in meteorology than he is on how the city's seasons have affected Parisians across the centuries. So synchronized with the weather, French Revolutionaries tried to purge royalist and religious influences by renaming traditional months. For Baxter himself, the seasons open up new ways of looking at his marriage, the birth of a daughter, and his becoming a true Parisian. These events further resonate in his literary observations and his relations with contemporary authors, such as Umberto Eco. He skewers the famous song April in Paris, pointing out that the lyrics' images don't necessarily conform to nature's reality. Lovers of Paris will get a deeper feeling about their beloved capital from Baxter.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)