Paris in Love

In 2009, New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James took a leap that many people dream about: she sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor, and moved her family to Paris. Paris in Love: A Memoir chronicles her joyful year in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

 

With no classes to teach, no committee meetings to attend, no lawn to mow or cars to park, Eloisa revels in the ordinary pleasures of life—discovering corner museums that tourists overlook, chronicling Frenchwomen’s sartorial triumphs, walking from one end of Paris to another. She copes with her Italian husband’s notions of quality time; her two hilarious children, ages eleven and fifteen, as they navigate schools—not to mention puberty—in a foreign language; and her mother-in-law Marina’s raised eyebrow in the kitchen (even as Marina overfeeds Milo, the family dog).

 

Paris in Love invites the reader into the life of a most enchanting family, framed by la ville de l’amour.

"Two American academics with growing kids shucked life in the New Jersey suburbs for a year in Paris and savored the splendors of style and gourmandise, as James, the nom de plume of romance author Mary Bly, recounts in this effervescent diary. Bly, a professor at Fordham University, wangled the family to Paris on her sabbatical after the death of her mother from cancer and her own bout with breast cancer. Her Italian-American husband, Alessandro, was the only one who could speak French, while the two children, Anna, 11, and Luca, 15, were immersed in an American school in Paris where they were shocked by the rigor and discipline compared to their American Quaker school. Living on the rue du Conservatoire, in the diverse 9th arrondissement, and aiming to write academic tomes and romance novels, the author mainly shopped, according to her percolating dispatches rendered in discrete segments like diary entries: for chocolate, shoes, emergency hair highlights, and lingerie. Dazzled by the array of menu choices and fine luxury products, she was frequently paralyzed by the Frenchwoman's ability to look chic without being studied or silly. While the children struggled then triumphed in school and with new friends, the dog grew fatter, and Alessandro advised his French conversation partner in affairs of the heart, James/Bly discovered a 'materialist's playground' in Paris, finding just that precious objet or museum or nibble, and relaying in her sensible, reflective prose the lessons to take home and dream over. Agent: Kim Witherspoon. (Apr.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Mary Bly (aka Eloisa James) is currently a full professor and co-director of the creative writing program at Fordham. She and her family now live in New York City. Paris in Love is her first work of nonfiction.