Left Bank. Kate Muir

I started reading this book just before I went to Paris and was enthralled from the start. While I was in Paris I was still reading it and was amazed that I was in those places that they were talking about in the book. This is a great book for any francophile as it portrays French culture at it's best and worst.

This book is a change from those I usually read - generally I only pick books where I can relate to the main character in some way - and I am about as different from Madison Malin and Anna Ayer as a person can be! However I found myself entraced by Muir's writing and read on, convinced that truth under the artifice would eventually seep through into the story, and on this score Muir did not disappoint. Like peeling back the wrapper on a glorious and well aged cheese (or perhaps like unraveling the pastry from one of Olivier's prized patisserie treats) the truth of the Malin family is revealed one gourmet sized portion at a time. When I first began reading I was firmly in Anna's corner - identifying with the troubled nanny who befriended the lonely Sabine and took on the mother's role when Madison could not (or would not). However as the story unfolded, I got over my initial dislike for the self centered and gastronomically challenged Madison and by the end of the book it was her I felt closest to, and her I respected the most. This book would obviously mean a lot more to people who have been to Paris (sadly, I am not one of them!) and can recall the famous landmarks where the story takes place. For me, the attention given to setting was all generally lost, with one French named location blending into all the others. This would be a lovely book to take to Paris and read while you are there! I agree the ending was predictable, and I would have liked all of the characters to have gained a measure of self awareness, but such is life.

In Paris Olivier Malin is old generation French with a family motto; he is the author of Chechnya: Beyond Philosophy and renowned for his love of cheese, wine, and slender tall women. His wife Madison is a product of Hollywood via the Lone Star States; her family proves you can take the Texan out of Texas, but can't take Texas out of the Texan. Residents of the Left Bank consider Olivier and Madison as the perfect couple and with their perfect daughter seven-year-old daughter Sabine make up the perfect family. The biggest issue facing Olivier is the cheese right; for Madison is age as the camera makes her look old performing in the nude. However, that changes when Sabine vanishes at a theme park. As her parents panic while searching for Sabine, concierge, friends, family, well wishers and servants tear the couple apart with their specialized compassion including a few providing physical passion. Sabine seems increasingly more like a lost trophy than a missing child. This is a terrific satire of French and American family values as the rescue of Sabine seems insignificant to her parents once the retinue shows up. The story line fries French and Texas frontier pretenses in which the image is everything and Botox is god. Kate Muir uses the mixed cultural couple to lampoon the dysfunctional historical and modern relationship between America and France symbolized by the Statue of Liberty as much as by Congressional name changing to frontier fries. Harriet Klausner

Most romance novels set in Paris are formulaic: an attractive, single woman travels to Paris to escape her dull life hoping to to find passion and to discover herself. In such novels, Paris becomes little more than a cliche. As a recent article in the New York Times recognized, people who read these books are "into the fantasy of Paris, the Paris of sophistication and magic and Champagne" (p. B25, New York Times, August 4, 2006), and when it comes to the genre of romance novels, the "perpetual power" of Paris "to excite, transform, inspire and liberate" sells books. However, London Times columnist Muir's debut novel, LEFT BANK, impressively escapes the Paris-romance-novel formula. On the surface, Olivier and Madison Malin are "Paris's Perfect Couple" (p. 178), "the Great Mind and the Great Body of the Left Bank." Olivier is a celebrated French intellectual and philosopher, author of "Chechnya: Beyond Philosophy," and a descendant of French aristocracy. Like Sarte, he has an insatiable appetite for "slim, elegant" (p. 30) young mistresses, including the Malins' hip English nanny, Anna. Madison is "sub-pornographic art-house" American film star from Texas turned perfect Parisian beauty. Together they live an enviable Parisian lifestyle of Left Bank cafes and only the finest French clothes, cheeses, and wines. However, when their seven-year-old daughter, Sabine, disappears at PlayWorld Paris (a Euro-version of Disneyland), their self-absorbed world of elegant appearance is torn apart, forcing the couple to examine their less-than-perfect marriage, to cut through years of affairs and misunderstandings--"layers of rotten flesh," to "return to the bones of their relationship" (p. 264). "And in the end it all stank of superficiality" (p. 302). Although Muir writes with anti-French sentiment, reading her novel is as pleasurable as a spoonful of Mont d'Or with a glass of red. Readers interested in this genre might also consider: CAPTURING PARIS, Katharine Davis; PARIS HANGOVER, Kirsten Lobe; SALAAM, PARIS, Kavita Daswani; THAT SUMMER IN PARIS, Abha Dawesar; and WEEKEND IN PARIS, Robyn Sisman. G. Merritt

Kate Muir's wry, sardonic Left Bank opens with a scene that so many parents dread - the inexplicable disappearance of their child. When the handsome forty-something Frenchman Olivier Marlin and his beautiful Texan-born actress wife Madison lose their daughter Sabine in PlayWorld Paris, an American-style fun park, the event signifies the beginning of the end for their delicate and brittle marriage. More intent with keeping up appearances than seeing to Sabine's well being, Olivier and Madison have been living a life of self-absorption and conceit. The "it" couple of Paris, Oliver is considered one of France's leading philosophy writers - his latest book is the controversial Chechnya - Beyond Philosophy - and his days are filled with sampling the gastric delights of his countrymen, whilst also intent to line up a steady assortment of secretaries to sleep with. Madison endures Olivier's dalliances; perhaps because she's intent to keep a type of youthful hubris and also because she's seeking to escape from being tarred as a Texan model turned actress; she wants to be a true Parisian. She's the kind of woman who carefully attends her own inner life, and is remarkably self-obsessed. She even engages in a platonic extramarital affair with her friend Paul, more out of necessity rather than desire. Both Madison and Olivier have a strained and edgy understanding, a type of reciprocated arrangement - the affairs - real for him, fictional for her - balance their relationship and temper their half-hearted commitment to Sabine. But the delicate and frail dynamics of their life together, their world of intellectualism, gastronomy and coiffure is altered by arrival at the rue du Bac of Anna Ayer, a hip English nanny. Anna had lived in Paris for four years and already knows the reputation of Olivier and Madison - he was the unavoidable fodder for late-night cultural television shows and she notorious for almost pornograhpic art-house films. Sabine takes an instant liking to Anna, and Anna is worldly and groovy enough to realize that she can offer this child the security and emotional stability she needs. Anna's carefree and happy-go-lucky beauty doesn't escape the wondering eye of Olivier. She sees him as the handsome heroic philosopher in a flak jacket, part of the chattering classes, whilst Oliver gets caught up in an affair with her. After all, there is nothing Olivier enjoys more other than a perfect meal than the pursuit of love - extramarital love. But Olivier and Anna's surreptitious affair threatens to come undone by doings of the blowsy and strictly Catholic concierge, Madame Canovas; she's all too quick to spy on the couple, especially when she has Sabine's best interests at heart. Muir deftly mixes up the transatlantic pot and lets the sparks fly as Olivier, Anna and Madison inevitably clash. There's certainly something rotten in the state of the rue du Bac, a selfishness and disregard for others, particularly with Olivier and his ridicul