A Town Like Paris: Falling in Love in the City of Light by Bryce Corbett

From the Publisher

At the age of twenty-eight, stuck in a dead-end job in London, and on the run from a broken heart, Bryce Corbett takes a job in Paris, home of l’amour and la vie boheme; he is determined to make the city his own—no matter how many bottles of Bordeaux it takes. He rents an apartment in Le Marais, the heart of the city’s gay district, hardly the ideal place for a guy hoping to woo French women. He quickly settles into the French work/life balance with its mandatory lunch hour and six weeks of paid vacation. Fully embracing his newfound culture, Corbett frequents smoky cafes, appears on a television game show, hobnobs with celebrities at Cannes, and attempts to parse the nuances behind French politics and why French women really don’t get fat. When he falls in love with a Parisian showgirl, he realizes that his adopted city has become home.

As lively and winning as Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence and Sarah Turnbull’s Almost French, Sex and the City of Light evokes the beauty, delights, and charms of Paris for an ever-eager audience of armchair travelers.

The New York Times - Joshua Hammer

a refreshing variation on a shopworn theme: the Anglophone at large in the French capital, coping with the language barrier, inaccessible Gallic women and bad plumbing.

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. (Apr.)

Melissa Stearns - Library Journal

Almost on a whim, Corbett, an Australian working in London for Sky News, answers a job posting for a director of communications at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. To his surprise, he gets the job. So he moves to Paris, where he spends the next few years working a little, partying a lot, playing in a locally successful rock band, traveling, hanging out with showgirls and other ex-pats, and coping with French bureaucracy. Although this is not a guide, anyone attracted to working in Paris will be interested in Corbett's sketches of finding an apartment, French work life (short days, long employer-paid lunches, numerous holidays), scooter riding in heavy traffic, odd medical care, and the revelation that all French women are thin and stylish and all French men are short, smelly, and unattractive. That last observation notwithstanding, Corbett opines that French women are really all thin because of the nervous energy they expend worrying that their husbands are cheating on them. After six years, Corbett finds himself caught between Paris and Australia, not really belonging to either yet needing both. This memoir by a carousing Aussie ex-pat is entertaining, but less partying may have led to more insight. Recommended for larger public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

The book your mildly funny co-worker dreams of quitting his job to write. Corbett, a dissatisfied young Australian gossip columnist, had always fantasized about living in Paris. Instead, he found himself broke in London, loathing the fog and, after two years, still trying to get over the failed relationship that brought him there. So when he saw an ad for a job in Paris, he applied, even though he was "hopelessly underqualified." To his surprise, he was hired. He found an apartment, witnessed a Parisian couple copulating before an unshuttered window, and suddenly his heart was no longer his own. The rest of the memoir is devoted to his burgeoning love affair with the city, along with some stabs at human romance. While Corbett's exuberance is winning and his writing competent, his adventures are standard guidebook fare. He presents unforgivably unimaginative insights and nicknames with the expectation of belly laughs: His circle of expat friends is the "Paris Posse"; he dubs a fellow gym-goer "the Freak," because she's weird; and one of the objects of his adoration is "the Showgirl," because . . . she's a showgirl. The author fails to devote enough time to the few truly amusing episodes, as when he contracted crabs, apparently without sexual contact of any kind, and had to visit a series of insensitive, unbelieving or hard-of-hearing medical professionals. Also quite funny is his account of being coerced into appearing on a French-language game show. A sense of shame prevents him from giving anything but a summary account of the proceedings, but the reactions he describes from those who saw the show indicate it must have been memorable. More episodes like this would have greatly improvedhis uneven, mostly uninspired book. Reads like an extended junior year abroad. Agent: Faye Bender/Faye Bender Literary Agency

Product Details

• ISBN: 0767928172
  
• ISBN-13: 9780767928175
• Format: Paperback, 304pp
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Pub. Date: April 2008
• Sales Rank: 107,954