Left Bank [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Kate Muir (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 20, 2006

A devilishly sneaky, chic, and ironic peek at the glittering inhabitants of Paris’s most exclusive neighborhood

Olivier and Madison Malin have what most celebrity magazines would call the perfect life. Olivier is a telegenic version of Sartre: philosopher, gourmand, and media personality—the darling of Paris’s most exclusive cafés, as well as the darling of more than one mistress. And Madison’s celebrity has eclipsed even her husband’s. An American film star turned Parisian It girl, Madison has buried her Texas upbringing—along with a few years from her true age—beneath the trappings of an exquisitely decorated salon, an impeccable French accent, and a collection of couture gowns. Together, Olivier and Madison are the toast of Paris’s neighborhood of neighborhoods, the Left Bank, where the perfect couple and their friends indulge in fine wines, bon mots, and some exceptional cheeses.

Everything looks flawless, if a touch pretentious. But when their precocious trophy daughter Sabine goes missing at a European mega-amusement park, her self-centered parents are finally forced to focus on something other than their own reflections.

With the sting of a good Camembert, Kate Muir’s fiction debut is a sophisticated, fun, and delightfully satirical look at family life along Paris’s Left Bank that will have readers of all ages hungry for more.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

London Times columnist Muir's impressive fiction debut, an atmospheric tour of Paris, follows the contretemps of "the Great Mind and the Great Body of the Left Bank": Olivier Malin, descendant of an old-line French family (Victorieux à Touts is the family motto) and author of Chechnya: Beyond Philosophy, is the telegenic intellectual pere de famille with an insatiable appetite for fine cheeses and slender young mistresses, while his wife, Texas-born "sub-pornographic art-house" film star Madison, is too old for nude scenes, but too young to retire. The discomfiture underlying their marriage ignites when their seven-year-old daughter, Sabine, disappears in a theme park. As Olivier and Madison search for Sabine, the family's circle of servants and supporters, knowingly or not, pulls the couple apart. Paul, a museum curator, has an unrequited passion for Madison; Anna, the English nanny, consummates Olivier's passion for her at the Hôtel Select; and Madame Canovas, the nosy concierge, keeps the gossip circulating. Muir's book is filled with sensations, insights and barbs ("She was exquisitely polite but rather formal, with the reserved expression of the recently Botoxed") and is enriched by perceptions about culture, politics and the doomed love affair between America and France. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Seat of the University of Paris, the Left Bank of the river Seine has been historically associated with a freewheeling, Bohemian lifestyle, but in the late twentieth century, the Left Bank found itself transformed by residents with extraordinary amounts of ready cash adopting lifestyles informed less by the Sorbonne than by Sybaris. It is this chic scene that Muir sets out to expose in this novel. In their elegant apartment, Olivier and Madison Malin live a surreally well-endowed Parisian life--the sharpest clothes, the finest cheeses, the most exquisite wines, the most celebrated acquaintances. Oliver springs from generations of French aristocracy, Madison from Texas roots suitably repackaged by Hollywood. Their perfect world of perfect appearance goes awry when their daughter disappears on an outing at a European version of an American amusement park that combines Disneyworld with Las Vegas, and the couple is forced to acknowledge the less-attractive aspects of their ethereal Parisian existence. Whether this semisatirical depiction of Parisian life deflates or encourages America's present anti-French popular sentiment remains to be determined. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (July 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0632052422
• ISBN-13: 978-0632052424
• ASIN: B000VYT1NW
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,222,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Surprising reversal of opinions, June 5, 2007

By 

Bookphile (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Left Bank (Hardcover)

What I found most enjoyable about this book was the deft way in which the author manipulated my emotions. I was amazed how I could start with such a strongly negative reaction to one character and a positive one to another and then experience a total flip flop of my opinions. I really like it when an author can take a concept and turn it on its head and I think that's this novel's greatest success. Overall, though, it wasn't a hugely satisfying read but I think Muir has some serious potential.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Souffle, August 29, 2006

By 

John Joss (Los Altos, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Left Bank (Hardcover)

Kate Muir's clever and well written book will in some ways reverse the distaste for bad books about Paris typified by the abominably written and researched Dan Brown 'Da Vinci' mess.

Where Brown mangled the geography and wrote with a baseball bat to the keys, Muir captures the essential terroir with tasteful and witty prose, while creating a marvelous bouillabaisse of characters--Olivier Malin, an uppity French intellectual, his transplanted Texan wife Madison, their 7-year-old daughter Sabine, the Brit-French nanny Anna, the Chechen cook Luiiza and her thuggy comperes, the concierge Madame Canovas . . . they are all well drawn and their interactions entertainingly appropriate, and the story credibly plotted.

Any reader who likes the real (as opposed to the tourist) Paris will find this book charmingly authentic, capturing not just the geography but the essence of the place, conveying Gallic sensibilities through the eyes of one who is obviously and unapologetically a British writer who likes and knows the place and the people (Muir has worked in Paris for the TIMES of London). Muir's satirical edge cuts where necessary, avoiding the easy cheap shots but revealing the curious and fascinating differences between cultures--for example, between the not-quite-French-enough Madison (seemingly modeled on the Connecticut-born actress known as 'Arielle Dombasle') and the all-too-self-consciously charming and preening Olivier (clearly a thin disguise for Dombasle's husband Bernard-Henri Levy or BHL, who is mentioned by the author as a 'fellow philosopher,' perhaps to avoid precisely this comparison).

For Muir, with Viking as her publisher, this is an excellent first novel that despite an uneven middle section sustain's the reader's interest to the end. Her next offering is awaited with interest. She has the chops.

PS Oui, d'accord, 'souffle' should have an 'egu' on the final letter but the resolutely American website doesn't care and won't offer proper accents--my apologies.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable read, more unpredictable than I thought, November 3, 2006

By 

Marchissimo (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Left Bank (Hardcover)

I really liked this novel: good introspection of the characters moods and personalities. A bit repetitive and patronizing to the reader on the locale: why going on and on to make us understand it takes place in Paris? We know, we can taste it, we love Paris. Over all very visual: it would make a nice movie.