Paris and Her Remarkable WomenBy Lorraine Liscio, The Little Book Room, £12.99
While reading this book I was told by one person: “Make sure you tell everyone how French women are the best in the world.” The person in question was admittedly female and French, but, reading these pages, you could be forgiven for agreeing with her.
Lorraine Liscio has collected autobiographical vignettes of women who have at one point or another called the City of Light their home: revolutionaries and royalty, divas and designers, scientists and scandalistes.
Liscio gives each woman a brief biographical treatment, and charmingly balances the details of their lives with their more colourful carry-on in punchy paragraphs. These are followed up with the sites around Paris where you can trace these women’s lives, from the staircase down which Coco Chanel’s creations were modelled to the stage where Sarah Bernhardt first became divine.
Liscio does a fine job in summarising these women’s achievements in the face of adversity. The chapter on Maria Sklodowska (or Marie Curie, as the French would have it) is particularly satisfying, and the details of the conditions she worked under are particularly appalling.
This being Paris, though, the whiff of scandal is as noticeable as Chanel No 5, from Coco’s own life story and the writings of Colette to the extraordinary love story of the abbess Héloïse.
If there is a criticism of this book, it is that this elegant volume, with its beautiful illustrations, is too short by half. But, then again, this could well send you scurrying to the biography section of your bookshop before you start trying to track the ghosts of these oh-so-chic Parisians through the streets they once strolled along.
This book is utterly charming, beautiful to look at and somewhat mysterious – just like the women of Paris, then.
- lmackin@irishtimes.com
