The 14th of July marks Bastille Day in France, a commemoration of the 1789 storming of a despised prison by rebellious Parisians in a precursor to the French Revolution. Honoring French unity and identity, the national holiday is celebrated with fireworks, military parades and general revelry, not unlike our own 4th of July celebrations (but presumably more stylish and sophisticated).
Since sipping champagne under the Eiffel Tower isn’t an option for most of us this Bastille Day, we’ve instead rounded up some of our favorite books by expat authors on their experiences of living in France.
Bonne lecture!
A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
Published posthumously in 1964, this evocative memoir chronicles Ernest Hemingway’s experiences as a struggling writer in 1920s Paris, where he was famously part of a hard-partying literary circle that included Gertrude Stein, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Travel back in time to Hemingway’s favorite haunts and experience Paris through his prose.
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” – Ernest Hemingway
My Life in France, by Julia Child
The iconic chef’s autobiography is a love letter to France, her “spiritual homeland,” where she moved with her husband in 1948, and eventually and famously mastered the art of French cooking. On her very first day in France, Julia Child experienced “the most exciting meal of my life,” and was duly inspired to learn to achieve the same results in her own kitchen. And so began a storied career in fine cuisine. The book, co-written with Child’s grandnephew Paul Prud’homme, was published in 2006, two years after her death at 91.
“In all the years since the succulent meal, I have yet to lose the feelings of wonder and excitement that it inspired in me. I can still almost taste it. And thinking back on it now reminds me that the pleasures of table, and of life, are infinite–toujours bon appétit!” – Julia Child
A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle
When Peter Mayle penned A Year in Provence, his 1989 best-selling travel memoir about leaving behind his native England for the charms of southern France, he never imagined he would inspire a deluge of copycat tourists to flood his adopted region. But his idyllic depictions of life in the quaint French village of Ménerbes proved so popular that Mayle found himself the constant target of uninvited visitors, and ultimately had to move to a new and undisclosed Provençal location to preserve his privacy. Since its original publication, the book has sold over six million copies, and been translated into 40 languages. Mayle published several companion books before his death in 2018.
“Apart from the peace and emptiness of the landscape, there is a special smell about winter in Provence which is accentuated by the wind and the clean, dry air. Walking in the hills, I was often able to smell a house before I could see it, because of the scent of woodsmoke coming from an invisible chimney.” – Peter Mayle
Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik
In 1995, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik moved from New York to Paris with his wife and young child to experience family life in the City of Light. Paris to the Moon is a collection of the essays and journal entries he wrote over their five years there, during which he and wife added a second child to their family. Funny and engaging, Gopnik provides a modern expat perspective on both the complexities and the joys of life as an American abroad in Paris.
“There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it. The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more.” -Adam Gopnik
Bringing Up Bébé, by Pamela Druckerman
Why do French babies sleep better, eat better and behave better than their American counterparts? These are the mysteries Pamela Druckerman, an American living in Paris, attempts to solve after giving birth to her first child there. A humorous examination of French parenting from an outsider’s perspective, Bringing Up Bébé reveals some of the techniques Druckerman’s French acquaintances rely on to raise their children, while highlighting some of the key cultural differences of parenting in France versus America.
“It turns out that to be a different kind of parent, you don’t just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.” – Pamela Druckerman
