A Town Like Paris
Living and loving in the city of light
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
At the end of a nine-year relationship, stuck in a dead-end job and on the run from his broken heart Australian journalist Bryce Corbett left London for Paris, home of 'l'amour' and 'la vie boheme'.
Arriving with only a suitcase and school-boy French, he finds himself an apartment and slowly launches himself into 'la vie Parisienne'. It doesn't take Bryce long to discover his down-home Aussie charm has no currency in France - either with Parisienne women or French plumbers.
Undeterred, Bryce is determined to make the city his own - no matter how many bottles of Bordeaux it takes. Fully embracing his newfound culture, he is exposed to some of the more unfathomable idiosyncrasies of the French, from the revealing lack of window coverings and alcohol-rationed soirees, to the exasperating non-existent customer service and the traffic black hole around the Arc de Triomphe.
Just when he thinks he knows it all and Paris has offered him all she has to give, he meets a showgirl - an Australian beauty whose sequin-clad high-kicks are the toast of the Champs Elysees.
Bryce might just discover that what he came to France looking for was a lot closer to home than he had ever imagined.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Australian journalist Corbett offers a humorous and vivid account of his love affair with Paris. In an attempt to save his nine-year relationship with his high school sweetheart, Corbett follows her from Sydney to London. His efforts prove ineffectual and the two break up within weeks of his arrival. On a whim, 28-year-old Corbett applies for the position as head of public relations for a government organization based in Paris. Although he has little PR experience or interest in the job itself he is offered and accepts the position, living the French belief that people should work to live and not live to work. Corbett balances his boring formal office life with various exploits involving nightly debauchery. As an expatriate, his experiences with the French government, the French Plumber's Union and the various crazies who make up his Le Marais neighborhood are entertaining. As Corbett adjusts to the city language barrier and cultural differences included he makes friends, enjoys the food and eventually falls in love with a woman named Shay. Corbett's comically insightful observations of the French, along with his Aussie interpretations of joie de vivre, make for an amusing memoir.
