Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: Exposed Author: Jean-Philippe Blondel, trans. Alison Anderson ISBN: 978-1-939931-67-2 Publisher: New Vessel Press Type of book: Painting, relationships, aging, artist, fame, family, moving on, France, friendship, model/artist relationships Year it was published: 2019 (original in 2018) Summary: A French teacher on the verge of retirement is invited to a glittering opening that showcases the artwork of his former student, who has since become a celebrated painter. This unexpected encounter leads to the older man posing for his portrait. Possibly in the nude. Such personal exposure at close range entails a strange and troubling pact between artist and sitter that prompts both to reevaluate their lives. Blondel, author of the hugely popular novel The 6:41 to Paris, evokes an intimacy of dangerous intensity in a tale marked by profound nostalgia and a reckoning with the past that allows its two characters to move ahead in to the future. Characters: M...

Title of the book: Madeleine Project; Uncovering a Parisian Life Author: Clara Beaudoux, Alison Anderson Translator Publisher: New Vessel Press Publishing Date: 2016 ISBN: 978-1-939931-49-8 Summary: "Simply magical. . . . Words and images, magnified in this book, are woven together in small strokes to create two moving portraits of women." —Lire "A beautiful book that bears witness. An original compilation of traces, thoughts and photos . . . that form the strata of our collective memory." —Télérama A young woman moves into a Paris apartment and discovers a storage room filled with the belongings of the previous owner, a certain Madeleine who died in her late nineties, and whose treasured possessions nobody seems to want. In an audacious act of journalism driven by personal curiosity and humane tenderness, Clara Beaudoux embarks on The Madeleine Project, documenting what she finds on Twitter with text and photographs, introducing the world to an ...

Name of Book: The 6:41 to Paris Author: Jean-Phillipe Blondell ISBN: 978-1-939931-26-9 Publisher: New Vessel Press Type of book: France, Paris, first love, reunion, train, lives, pride, modern times, chance meetings, connections, friendship Year it was published: 2013 (translated 2015) Summary: Cécile, a stylish forty-seven-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation thirty years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles towards the French capital. Cécile and Philippe undertake their own face to face journey—In silence? What could they possibly say to one another?—with the re...