Whether you’re fleeing the capital to travel and explore, or enjoying summer in Paris during the Games, you’ll need some quality reading material. We asked the English-language booksellers at Smith & Son what books will be accompanying them on holiday this summer.
Here are some to be starting with:
Shelley Noble – The Tiffany Girls
In 1899, a young French girl flees Paris, leaves her father, an art forger wanted by the police, and goes to New York to try to start a new life. As an artist in the Women’s Division of the Tiffany Glass Company, she finds friendship and respect for her talent. This well researched novel , based on real facts and people, will charm anyone interested in art, history and strong female characters.
Oscar Wilde – The Decay of Lying
A pearl of Oscar Wilde, one of his best essays. Wilde here defends the lie as an element superior to the truth for artistic creation, with the famous motto that it is life that imitates art. A false dialogue in a library that will become one of the main arguments of modern art. The volume contains also The critic as Artist.
Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep and Other Novels
Smoke-filled, quick-witted and downright hypnotic, the three novels in this collection are among Chandler’s best. Philip Marlowe is a down-on-his-luck private eye who often finds himself entangled in an intricate web of lies, deception and blurry morals. Each novel is a radiography of Los Angeles’ seedy underground, where everyone is trying to get by, in any way they can – no matter the cost.
Hernan Diaz – Trust
A literary tour de force by Hernan Diaz, this novel masterfully takes the reader for a ride, betting on their intelligence through four interwoven narratives. The authors of these narratives do not all possess the same level of skill, but they all revolve around the same story. Beyond the critique of the American dream, in the vein of Philip Roth or Tom Wolfe, Hernan Diaz succeeds in giving this book, which gradually becomes a real page-turner, a poignant, bittersweet feminist tone.
Click here to discover all 28 books in this summer’s reading selection, carefully picked by the booksellers at Smith & Son, independent English bookshops in Paris and now Versailles.