True Pleasures: A Memoir of Women in Paris - Lucinda Holdforth

Well I just finished this book - and I mean literally. I've walked from my bed to the computer, which is all of 10 metres and started to type. What a joy!!! I so thoroughly enjoyed this book for so many reasons.

Not only is it well written, it is lively and keeps a good pace. It combines history, intellectual ideas, memoir, feminism, and good narrative. Holdworth provides interesting tidbits about significant women in French hisotry. In particular Parisian history. I should say that the women are not necessarily significant in a political or even an intellectual sense, they are important in the book more so from their capacity to design their own life and lead it with flair, sexual confidence and indulgence and with a thirst for conversation.

There is an interesting discussion of the Parisan woman's fixation with the aesthete. I thought I'd be bored and started to flip the pages. I have no interest in the appreciate of 'nice' things based upon their financial price or weighted label. However, Holdforth manages to introduce another perspective. One that examines such appreciation as one smiliar to art - paintings, drawings, even music.

I was fascinated by Holdforth's account of Nancy Mitford having recently read "Love in a Cold Climate" and "The Blessing". What a laugh; what a woman. She was fun. That sounds like 'nice' but I think it is interesting she was English. She did not (and it would seem, could not) conform and had to move to Paris (France) in order to live as she chose

I was also introduced to Germaine de Stael. And learnt more about Colette. I've not read anything by her but will appreciate the background when I do. Holdforth's account of Coco Chanel and her entry (and re entry) into fashion was also of interest.

I must admit that I was touched by the book because it allowed me to fly away from my smaller life as a new mother in inner Sydney and dream of living life in Paris as a woman, free, rule-breaking, with style and personal enlightment; indulging in the wonders of such a beautiful city.

I'm well aware that Holdforth romanticises not only her own experience of Paris but that of the women she discusses, but to be fair, it's believable and it seduced me. She deftly draws attention to the (same) romanticising Australian women are prone to. I think she's right. In a potential cultural vacuum such as ours (and yes I'm aware that such a comment is not completely fair), one tends to dream of the potential of beauty, culture, sophistication of ideas and indulgence in talk of talk's sake.

I've been to Paris once, last year. I too was mesmerised by its beauty, its culture and its diehard idiosyncracies. But the Parisian experience remains just that. I don't think its 'transportable' and that the ruminating Holdforth indulgences in while swanning through Paris just wouldn't occur elsewhere, particularly at home. That is part of her point I think - she had to go to Paris and experience it via the women in whom she held significant interest. It is this that leads to the enlightment she was searching for at the beginning of the book.

I appreciate Holdforth's own journey of self-discovery. It came at a good moment for me as it gave me a sense of 'what could be' and reminded me that only I can control that.

This post has become self-conscious and self referential so I'm going to go. Anyway, really enjoyable read. Nice glass of champagne, strawberries and lie on the chaiz lounge to read this.