Customer Reviews

Me, Myself and Paris: One Toe Under the Eiffel Tower, The Other In the Grocery Store

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The writing style is clumsy and the "stories" aren't terribly interesting. I wanted to be transported to Paris. Instead, I was transported to the author's internal whining. It's quite possibly the worst travel/expat memoir I've ever encountered.

I really enjoy travel narrative books but this one was very difficult to stay interested in. The author seemed to be more self-absorbed than need be.

I've never been so disappointed with a book I bought on Amazon... First this book is incredibly short, it took me about 40 minutes to read it. And this isn't any type of long narrative about her time in Paris, it is just random short stories of 2 to 10 pages that have no value whatsoever.

I strongly recommend not buying this book.

I wonder who has never dreamed of going to Paris or some other far away land? Our author, Ruth Yunker, took the bull by the horns and made her dream come true. A feisty and free spirited woman she begins a 6-week stay in the city of lights, and her story begins.

Our author tells of her apartment and carefully gives us a mind's eye view of where she will call home for the next few weeks. She takes us on twists and turns as she attempts to buy an iron, one that does not work, and than is determined to return it and get her money back. Perhaps not as easy in Paris as it would be in the States. Does she?

My favorite story was the one about the fly, I am still wondering if it was her friend that she sent to its final reward or another one. I will never know. And I actually whispered a silent prayer that the dog she shared her food with did have a happy home to return to that night, again I will never know.

Inside the pages of this book you will share a woman's dream, at least for a little while. Told in a fun and light way you will taste a little of Paris, but more than that, you will smile at the victory of a woman's achievement to grab a slice of life and live it. A humorous, alive read, one I am sure you will enjoy.

This is a delightful read. An admiring ode to the City of Light, while not overlooking the challenges and irritations for a foreign temporary resident.
Ms.Yunker exhibits a lively and feisty persona, tempered by a fundamentally sympathetic view of the foibles of human nature.
She evokes the highs and lows of a resident stranger to the city and the language, while striving to understand and adapt to unfamiliar and and sometimes unfeeling local ways.
While regaling us with some activity she observes, Ms.Yunker can suddenly develop a story which fits the scene and enlivens it. Some of these vignettes end with a surprising twist worthy of O. Henry.
Her take on the Parc Monceau's statues of famous authors, all male, each with an adoring Muse draped around his feet, is hilarious and perceptive.
Ruth Yunker's Paris is very much alive and memorable.

Not having been to Paris yet I have little with which to compare "Me, Myself and Paris."

I can only compare it to Hemingways' "Movable Feast," or more recently, "Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang."
I find Yunkers' book to be more mild-mannered than either of the others. Not a word about the Spanish civil war as with Hemingway, nothing about eating disorders or pre-adolescent sexual experimentation as with Handler (in the first three pages!) I don't believe Chelsea has been to Paris yet either. Nothing in Handlers' book makes me care if she has.

I would rather spend an afternoon with Ruth's reflections than with either of these other two writers.
An hour in the bar with Hemingway might end in an old-fashioned rake fight instigated by some random remark I have made about bullfighting.
An hour in a bar with Handler - I don't want to spend an hour in a bar with Chelsea Handler. It's not happening. And yet I finished her book.

I finished "Me, Myself and Paris" too, though I ran for my Oxford Unabridged before I was five pages in, to look up the obscure 'roue.' And I puzzled fruitlessly to find a connection between acupuncture and claustrophobia.

I suppose other reflections on visits to Paris might be dense with florid descriptions of the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, or background on how those landmarks came to be. For this reason alone perhaps, Ruth takes the high road. She tells us mostly about her personal exploits during her stay. She details her traumae of adapting to public transportation, of using foreign currency (which is after all not the slightest bit foreign to them), of the language (the same), of gingerly selecting from local cuisine.

The occasional tourist outing seems almost superfluous. Ruth is there to live as the Parisiennes do. And Parisiennes are not going to endure trudging up endless flights of stairs to view local wonders that can as easily be seen in a magazine without having to worry about the weather, rudeness of the company or the problem of how to get back down. When describing her trip to Notre Dame there are three pages about the church, three about the chimera, and eight about climbing the stairs. Medical attention may be advisable. Climbing stairs should not cause your eyes to bug out and your tongue to turn black.

If this book has a foible it would be the absence of pictures. I would like to have seen the the rear end of the person in front of her on the spiral staircase. I was eager to see her pension, the quince tart that stole her heart, a shot of her struggling cutely with Metro passes. I would pay for the opportunity to see her driftwood.

Yet Ruth can turn a phrase. Her desription of `Something mildly ... blag?' about a tart she bought made me laugh. I couldn't have prevented myself if I had wanted to. And I can't quite believe the reported name of one street - the 'Rue de Petit Music.' I don't know much French but ...is that the 'street of not very much music? It may be a good place to live for people who are easily disturbed by noise.

It sounds as if Ruth Yunker will inevitably return to Paris for another go around, and that there will be another installment to her Francophone adventures on her return. I do hope she will invest in a small point-and-shoot digital camera before she goes.

Like any metropolis, Paris is complicated. You go there with certain images and illusions in your brain. If it's your first time, or second, you are confronted with continual puzzles just to do ordinary things like shop in stores or maneuver the subway (Metro) system. And if your knowledge of the French language is spotty or non-existent, well, that doesn't make things easier.
So, it's good to prepare. Ms. Yunker's book is a good preparation. She brings the experience of Paris down to human size and does it with humor. She offers both her illusions and disillusions. The door of her first apartment ("in the farthest reaches of the Marais in a "predominantly Asian neighborhood") is covered with graffiti. But they are French graffiti, "which gave a lyrical quality to my bleary eyes." She is dogged. She climbs the narrow stairs to the top of Notre Dame and gets vertigo on the heights. Then she does what all tourists do, compares what she sees (Paris from above) to what she knows, a photo or movie she has seen. But, she becomes more sophisticated and is soon comparing the radical differences between the automobile lifestyle of Southern California and the walk-everywhere lifestyle of Paris. Legs, shoes, umbrellas, gaits become the markers and concerns of this California woman alone, like some jet stream Robinson Crusoe in the city of windblown hair and expertly flung scarves.
It's not long before Ruth turns from Robinson Crusoe to the Woman of La Mancha, having to do battle with pushy Parisian pedestrians (yes, she has fun with alliteration) who threaten her progress with spear-like umbrellas. In her spiritual/touristic growth she becomes stronger: "Self-righteous indignation finally flared. I started holding my ground..."
But Ruth never turns the clash of cultures into chauvinistic judgments. Different is different and the challenge is to find out the appropriate response that will make her life in Paris more comfortable. In the book, Ruth does grow as she makes repeated returns to the challenge of the City of Light. By the time she has found the right shoes to walk, walk, walk around Paris she has also developed the courage to continue her beloved yoga in this foreign milieu.
She is brave, indeed, because the form of yoga an acquaintance suggests is Bikram yoga "Where they heat the room up eight million degrees, give or take a degree or two." Significantly, Ruth is seduced into the Bikram facility by tales of the male instructor in a slight thong (because of the heat). The book is not devoid of sensuality. But besides the heat, there's another challenge: undressing a mature body in the presence of "fawnlike", sixteeen-year-old Parisiennes.
The end of the chapter on Bikram yoga, sums up the book's happy ending. As she dealt with the challenges of the yoga studio, she dealt, in sum, with challenges of Paris: "I went back. A lot." Highly recommended for anyone who hasn't lived in Paris for eight million years, give or take a year.

I approached Me, Myself and Paris with hesitation: There are oh so many Paris-based personal memoirs that take the forms of travelogues, odes and restaurant guides. Was this just one more? Happily I can say "not at all". Ruth Yunker experiences Paris in little morsels and recounts them in her own carefully hewed voice. There is a touch of awe, a touch of delight, a touch of travel paranoia, a touch of surrender, a touch of conquest and anticipation, a touch of irritation at the French and some things French, and the inevitable reference back to Ruth's own fantaasies and expectations, creating a delicious tension that becomes the source of humor and insight -- about herself and about Paris. A reader of this book cannot help but gain an appreciation of Paris that only an unconventional and generous writer can convey. As an American in Paris for many years, I can only thank her for opening yet one more window (or shall I say, "trillions of windows") on this great and perplexing city.

This author turns what to most people would be a wonderful experience into a banal rant about nothing of interest and omits discussing the uniqueness and singularity of Paris.

I have tried 3 times to maintain some interest in this very dull book. I am 50 pages in and all but given up on expecting any real insight into Paris, it's inhabitants or the author. I may have another attempt if I have absolutely nothing else to read or I might just sleep!