Paris: A Love Story [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Kati Marton (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 14, 2012

This is a memoir for anyone who has ever fallen in love in Paris, or with Paris.

PARIS: A LOVE STORY

is for anyone who has ever had their heart broken or their life upended.

In this remarkably honest and candid memoir, award-winning journalist and distinguished author Kati Marton narrates an impassioned and romantic story of love, loss, and life after loss. Paris is at the heart of this deeply moving account. At every stage of her life, Marton finds beauty and excitement in Paris, and now, after the sudden death of her husband, Richard Holbrooke, the city offers a chance for a fresh beginning. With intimate and nuanced portraits of Peter Jennings, the man to whom she was married for fifteen years and with whom she had two children, and Holbrooke, with whom she found enduring love, Marton paints a vivid account of an adventuresome life in the stream of history. Inspirational and deeply human, Paris: A Love Story will touch every generation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Like . . . Didion, Joyce Carol Oates. . . . The book, short and intimate, reads like the wind from the urgency of the opening scene." (Susan Cheever Newsweek/The Daily Beast)

“I stayed up last night and read this book cover to cover. I can’t remember the last time I did that. It is wonderful—touching, romantic and honest—and oh, how it made me want to go to Paris!” (Barbara Walters)

"[A] must-read . . . enthralling" (Vogue)

“Kati Marton has lived a thrilling and turbulent life. … She fell in love with and married two famous men. … She has been an eyewitness to history in all its cruelty. … [I]n this memoir … she grapples with an unexpected new stage of life: widowhood. … [A] delicious read by a well-connected author." (The Washington Post)

“Paris provides a backdrop for this absorbing memoir of love and painful loss, played out on the larger stage of world politics….On a first-name basis with the political movers and shakers on a global stage, Marton has observed world politics in the making and makes space for readers on her catbird seat.” (Kirkus Reviews)

"Kati Marton is a writer of great clarity and grace. Paris: A Love Story is a revealing memoir about the contours of her own humanity, rendered with precision and honesty. It is a memorable story of love, loss and landscape that is as expansive as her remarkable life." (Steve Coll, author of Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power)

“A great read—the lightness of love, the drama of war and sudden death—with Paris in the background.” (Diane von Furstenberg)

About the Author

Kati Marton is the author of Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her other books include The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World, Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, Wallenberg, The Polk Conspiracy, and A Death in Jerusalem. She is an award-winning former NPR and ABC News correspondent. She lives in New York City.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (August 14, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1451691548
• ISBN-13: 978-1451691542
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (158 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,998 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

187 of 192 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Modern Day Benvenuto Cellini August 16, 2012

By Gadgetfan

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is an enjoyable summer read, but I had very definite deja vu to 40 years ago and reading the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini in college. Both Cellini and Marton are engaging writers, but their almost psychopathic egotism makes for an interesting, if at times, exasperating experience. One of the reasons famous people's biographies are more interesting is because most of us are curious to see behind the curtains of the rich and powerful. For instance, Bill Clinton, versus the neighbor who lives across the street, visits Marton the morning after her third husband dies. However, we never really get a sense of the multitude of celebrities that parade through this book, since generally they are presented as one dimensional figures whose role is to reflect Marton's splendor. The book might have been subtitled "famous people who had the pleasure of meeting me." They fall into good (those who fawn over Marton) and bad (those who express any hesitancy) I must say I never felt as positive about Nancy Reagan as when reading about her cautiousness in allowing herself to be interviewed by Marton.
There is even a rather bizarre section where Marton simply posts a number of positive Thank you notes from famous people to her and her husband for their hospitality while he was UN ambassador. They read like your basic BS like pleasantries one puts in a thank you note, but she seems to take them literally. She hints at some deep dark side to her divorced husband Peter jennings, but the only tangible complaint is that he finds her self centered and ambitious, and one can see where he is coming from. Perhaps the strangest part of this memoir, is that it is filled with so many famous people, and yet so devoid of any actual friends. Through all her tribulations, not one close female friend ever appears. One wonders whether she filtered her non-celebrity friends out of the book for their and her privacy, or she simply filtered them out of her life. This is a fine book to read on a plane or at the beach, but it does leave you shaking your head.

103 of 106 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A better title would have been...Kati A Love Story August 16, 2012

By Sally

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Does this woman love herself, or what? Her poor husbands! She cheated on Peter and Richard and felt obligated to let them know--what an incredibly self-absorbed woman. She shouldn't have anything nasty to say about Pamela Harriman---she seems to be a PH wannabe. I'm sure she'll be married again shortly. Well, not too much in the book about her love for Paris, but lots about her love for herself. As I said, the title is misleading.

75 of 76 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Meh August 22, 2012

By A Reader's Reader

Format:Kindle Edition

While I respect Ms. Marton's pain at the untimely death of her husband (who, it appeared, loved her very much), I have to say, this book was pretty dull. It was almost as if she went through the pages of a diary/datebook and just jotted down extraneous events.

At its base, Ms. Marton does not have much of an ear for dialogue, or for describing a noteworthy person or scene. At one point, she is reduced to sharing thank you notes that famous people sent her after dinner parties. People like Bill Clinton, Clark Clifford, Ted and Vicki Kennedy, Pamela Harriman all pass through her pages, but they are all described with about as much enthusiasm as the milkman. At first, I thought that perhaps this was because she came from television, and not used to writing descriptive, evocative passages? But who knows.

Also -- for those who say she went through a "tumultuous" divorce from her second husband, Peter Jennings, to my reading, it seems as if she and Dick Holbrooke went away for a romantic weekend about a month (or less?) after she separated from Jennings and then he was part of her life full force... they were together (very much so) right away, and then they got married. So it was not as if she was ever a struggling single mom with two kids to raise by herself not knowing what to do with her life. It sort of seems as if she went from one man to the next with no downtime.

Oh, and then she had an affair with some Hungarian guy about 10 years into her marriage with Holbrooke, but he asked her to end it, and she did. (But even that did not sound very exciting.)

I was really looking forward to this book. Read it from cover to cover in about two hours (if that). Holbrooke and Jennings led very interesting lives (as did she by extension, I suppose), but this book does not convey any of it. And as other reviewers have commented on, she does seem very keen on herself.