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This Long-Suffering Literary Endeavor
Paris Blue tells the story of your first love. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Such a big question, and such a good one.
I might start by quoting a line I recently discovered from Maya Angelou in which she said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” For over forty years I knew I had a story I would need to tell some day. Readers have recognized that there is something about this tale that goes beyond a simple story of first love. It follows the arc of my life over thirty years, into adulthood, happy marriage, and children, so it is also very much about the role of memory in our lives.
Also, the book describes how I searched for answers and closure for so many decades from the trauma at age twenty-two when the romance suddenly ended, and in a way, I essentially had to write my own ending, which brought about its own sort of catharsis.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
Oh, another great question. At one point in my decades-long journey of trying to tell this story, I changed the book into “fiction,” or at least I tried. I made it into a novel in which I tried to fictionalize certain parts and detach myself from the more personal parts. And I did this in order to protect my family, most notably my wonderful husband. Even though he has been unbelievably supportive about this long-suffering literary endeavor, I didn’t want to put in first-person writing the intensity of emotions that first love generates. Or draw attention to the music and poetry that I shared with the Frenchman that I don’t share in the same way with my husband. In the end, however, I realized that writing a memoir was the correct, most honest form and genre that this story had to be.
What is one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you were younger?
HA! I really don’t know how to answer this! Even though this story caused me a great deal of suffering at age twenty-two, I probably don’t wish it had happened any other way. If I answered something like, “I wish someone had told me that married men stay married” or “I wish someone had advised me to read the signals,” that would be way too simplistic and would not do justice to the subtleties of this fairytale (and I wouldn’t have a book).
What do you hope readers take away from your story?
That, when an intense, romantic and passionate “first love” ends suddenly without answers, it can take a lifetime to get over.
That words, music, and Paris can drive love to madness.
That our memories are not to be deleted and canceled, but treasured, whatever the outcome, and that they are our “life and food for future years.” (Wordsworth)
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Against a magical backdrop of Paris and classical music, Paris Blue is true fairy-tale memoir (with a dark underbelly) about the tenacious grip of first love.
Paris Blue
First loves only happen once a lifetime, and as such are memorable, for better or worse. In that vein, what could be a more memorable, or magical, experience than finding that love in Paris, a city well known for its romance? For Julie, a 20-year-old music student from a small town in Main, that’s exactly what happened. Furthering her musical talents, and trying to broaden her horizons in a city full of culture, Julie meets Luc, an older man who shares her passionate love of music and art. As the story so often goes, from that moment on, her life was never the same.
Paris Blue is a superbly written memoir by Julie Scolnik about finding unexpected and intense love, in a foreign country. I loved the descriptions of Paris and how the city became such a part of Julie’s story, creating the sense that the love she shared with Luc was literally impossible anywhere else. Scolnik’s wonderful prose perfectly captures the atmosphere and energy of Paris, and the first half of the book reads like a love letter to the city itself. Paris has had more than its fair share of lines written in its honor and this book joins those ranks, painting vivid pictures of bustling streets, quaint cafes, cultured inhabitants, and the serenely bucolic nature that the city still manages to maintain despite all the activity. Julie’s relationship with Luc takes more of a center stage in the latter part of the memoir, as their relationship progresses and then regresses in turns, leaving the reader unsure where the two may eventually land. Throughout the entire impassioned book, Scolnik keeps the tone deeply personal, opening each chapter with an excerpt from one of Luc’s letters, providing hints to events that occur later in their blossoming friendship turned to romance. She never shies away from her feelings or actions, portraying them all as accurately as one can imagine they were at the moment in time.
Music plays a big part in this story. It is music that brings them together in the first place, and the thing that they bond over so intensely, creating an emotional connection well before anything else. The music is so instrumental to their relationship, in fact, that Scolnik provides an index at the end of the pieces that meant the most to them. It’s a sentimental addition that creates another layer of vulnerability to the story being told.
Paris Blue is Julie Scolnik’s memoir, it will captivate readers that love Paris with her vivid descriptions. Readers that enjoy a true story romance will find this biography appealing and heartwarming.
Pages: 285 | ASIN : B09FVBXCJ1
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