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Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir
This is the story of two flawed eccentrics. Everything they do subverts their firm intention of keeping up appearances. They meet just after the war in liberated Paris but they cannot quite free themselves from the many strings attached to them - the old aunts, the sisters, the cousins, the nuns and the ominous concierges who dog their footsteps.
Alexandre is a banker and a Resistant and lives in a world of numbers and Roman emperors. Poum resides in the Odyssey and in her bed, hiding from the mysterious disapproval of their relatives, for they both seem to persist in some irreparable faux pas which has them wading through a lifetime pickle. Their daughter, Catherine, would like to help but she seems to be part of the problem.
This is no ordinary childhood, and Catherine de Saint Phalle’s acceptance of her parents, despite their flaws, shines through, propelling us head first into their strange, yet beautiful, Parisian world.
Poum and Alexandre is a searingly honest, humorous and moving elegy to family and place, and a meditation on the ways they ultimately define us.
Alexandre is a banker and a Resistant and lives in a world of numbers and Roman emperors. Poum resides in the Odyssey and in her bed, hiding from the mysterious disapproval of their relatives, for they both seem to persist in some irreparable faux pas which has them wading through a lifetime pickle. Their daughter, Catherine, would like to help but she seems to be part of the problem.
This is no ordinary childhood, and Catherine de Saint Phalle’s acceptance of her parents, despite their flaws, shines through, propelling us head first into their strange, yet beautiful, Parisian world.
Poum and Alexandre is a searingly honest, humorous and moving elegy to family and place, and a meditation on the ways they ultimately define us.
285 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2016
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187 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 24, 2017
This is a strange and bewitching book: a memoir of Catherine's Parisian childhood with her unconventional parents, Marie-Antoinette (Poum) and Alexandre
I could never doubt that I was reading the impressions and memories of a real eight-year old girl, and yet there were times when I might have been reading a fairy tale. A tale that was both flooded with light and overcast by dark clouds.
Stories was so important to Poum and Alexandre; they loved the telling of tales, and they drew from those stories to try to make sense of the world, their relationship and their own seemingly troubled history, for themselves and for their daughter.
Consequently, this book is threaded through with references to Greek mythology, the Odyssey, the Magna Carta, the Napoleonic Wars, Rodin and Claudel, the French Resistance ...
It sounds a little eccentric - and there are moments when it makes the book a little too dark and dense - but it feels utterly real and utterly right.
Catherine knows that her parents and her upbringing are unusual; and the words she writes about filled with wonder, with love, and completely without judgement.
She knows though that something is not right.
She senses disapproval from her wider family, and those relations are held at arm's length by her parents. She is told that it impossible for her to attend the local Catholic school, and instead she is taught by two elderly ladies in their apartment.
She doesn't like it at all, but she bears it stoically.
Poum, is an graceful, elegant woman, warmly when she visits Guerlain on the Champs-Elysees. But she is fragile, she needs care and support. There are days when she clings to her home, close to Napoleon's tomb, spending hours in bed reading The Odyssey; and there are other days when she vanishes completely.
Alexandre is much older than Poum, and much more stable. He leaves the apartment five days a week to work in a bank; and he disappears completely at the weekend, for reasons that are never explained to Catherine, though that day will come when she understands.
He knew Poum in England when she as a young child, and they came together when their paths crossed again, unexpectedly, in occupied France.
The structure of this book is both a strength and a weakness. The first half belongs to Poum and the second to Alexandre. I loved both, the contrast helped me to understand both, to understand the different things they gave to their daughter, and to understand why their relationship worked so very well for both of them. It was wonderfully effective seeing the same incidents twice from different perspectives, as well as seeing more aspects of Catherine's life. The drawback was that the contract sometimes made me feel that I was reading two different books about the same subject, that the book as a whole didn't quite coalesce. And that when I was with one I missed the other.
As a whole the book does work, because I so believed in Poum and Alexandre, and because so much of the writing was so beautiful, and so suffused with a daughter's love for her parents.
I loved this memoir for writing like that, for its wonderful mix of reality and charm, and most of all because it was such a fitting and loving tribute to unusual parents.
I could never doubt that I was reading the impressions and memories of a real eight-year old girl, and yet there were times when I might have been reading a fairy tale. A tale that was both flooded with light and overcast by dark clouds.
Stories was so important to Poum and Alexandre; they loved the telling of tales, and they drew from those stories to try to make sense of the world, their relationship and their own seemingly troubled history, for themselves and for their daughter.
Consequently, this book is threaded through with references to Greek mythology, the Odyssey, the Magna Carta, the Napoleonic Wars, Rodin and Claudel, the French Resistance ...
It sounds a little eccentric - and there are moments when it makes the book a little too dark and dense - but it feels utterly real and utterly right.
Catherine knows that her parents and her upbringing are unusual; and the words she writes about filled with wonder, with love, and completely without judgement.
She knows though that something is not right.
She senses disapproval from her wider family, and those relations are held at arm's length by her parents. She is told that it impossible for her to attend the local Catholic school, and instead she is taught by two elderly ladies in their apartment.
She doesn't like it at all, but she bears it stoically.
Poum, is an graceful, elegant woman, warmly when she visits Guerlain on the Champs-Elysees. But she is fragile, she needs care and support. There are days when she clings to her home, close to Napoleon's tomb, spending hours in bed reading The Odyssey; and there are other days when she vanishes completely.
Alexandre is much older than Poum, and much more stable. He leaves the apartment five days a week to work in a bank; and he disappears completely at the weekend, for reasons that are never explained to Catherine, though that day will come when she understands.
He knew Poum in England when she as a young child, and they came together when their paths crossed again, unexpectedly, in occupied France.
The structure of this book is both a strength and a weakness. The first half belongs to Poum and the second to Alexandre. I loved both, the contrast helped me to understand both, to understand the different things they gave to their daughter, and to understand why their relationship worked so very well for both of them. It was wonderfully effective seeing the same incidents twice from different perspectives, as well as seeing more aspects of Catherine's life. The drawback was that the contract sometimes made me feel that I was reading two different books about the same subject, that the book as a whole didn't quite coalesce. And that when I was with one I missed the other.
As a whole the book does work, because I so believed in Poum and Alexandre, and because so much of the writing was so beautiful, and so suffused with a daughter's love for her parents.
'I know I appeared into my mother's existence ten years into her shared life with my father. She thought she was barren, until she found she had a problem adjusting her skirt. 'Ouch, ouch, I must have gained some weight.' A friend advised her to go to a doctor. When she finally did she discovered she was sis months pregnant. 'You were a shock,' she tells me."
'Guerlain is a temple, a religion. The Guerlain mothership is on the Champs-Elysee. Its painted portals and stuccoed ceilings are ripe with Greek goddesses, and the scents of the place are so subtle that they circle you like invisible dolphins and ferry you away to mermaid land where the feminine reigns'
'I am stunned when I realise that my father had a childhood too. Like Mount Fuji in Hokusai's painting, he's always existed, as he is - smoky in the distance, honey-scented up close - but, when it finally dawns on me that once he was as small as I am, his childhood self comes rushing at me from the other end of the telescope.'
'The stained-glass wondows, little one, create a luminous slope of light. Whatever the time of day, from dawn to dust, the same dim glow is maintained within the church, whether it be bright sunshine or rain. That's the stained glass windows' secret. Right now they are sifting the brilliant afternoon glitter in the same way they will sift the pale light of dawn.'
'In Paris, a population of cleaning ladies lives in a seamlessly close parallel world to that of the city's other inhabitants. They have chapped hands and heavy legs. Their bearing is a little stately, like people in the thrall of an effort that encompasses too much of their being.'
'Poum is not an easy mother, either, but when I least expect it, with a glance, with a whiff of her scent as she passes, she pours gold in my cup. Of course, like fairy gold, it doesn't happen very often or last very long - in a second it's gone. But something of it stays with me because, as she quotes, my name is 'written in the palm of her hands.'
'We are walking through the cobbled streets with nary a space between each mediaeval house or building. The winding progress, the eagle's nest at the top, the dizzying sea and strand with their large invisible patches of moving sand are as attractive to pilgrims as to children. This is Poum and Alexandre's lair. They love it here and have come, I soon recognise by their exclamations, many times in the past.'
'My father tells me about so many people that I have problems unravelling the living from the dead and the characters in his stories from the real ones he's met. Our steps are slowing down. The building stand stiffly behind their addresses. I'm sure that if a bomb exploded they wouldn't budge an inch.'
I loved this memoir for writing like that, for its wonderful mix of reality and charm, and most of all because it was such a fitting and loving tribute to unusual parents.
May 5, 2017
A very strange book. I bought it on the strength of the review in the SMH (below)
A memoir of growing up in Paris with extremely eccentric parents.
You really need a grounding in classical literature, ancient mythology and middle ages to Napoleonic French history to understand it.
Every event is wrapped in the stories Catherine's parents tell & which she uses as metaphors for their lives.
Frankly, it was boring to me.
The first 100 pages were the worst, but I broke my "can't be bothered/set it aside" rule & persisted. The second part was slightly more engaging, but not by much.
The Saint Phalles are nobles - Dad was an Anglophile Count, who ran a bank and whose fortunes waxed and waned. One moment he was buying Ming vases on a whim, another, well.... not (the times of 'lack' didn't seem to be lacking much except Ming vases). He also seems to own property in England.
The second part is Catherine's relationship with her father...he whisks her around Paris on outings, or to Bruges or elsewhere (on a whim - very strange). On Sat afternoons & Sundays he visits his wife & children (Catherine's parents aren't married).
Her mother spends her days in bed reading, mainly The Odyssey; the only time she & Catherine go out is to Guerlain, where this distinctly odd woman insists the pre-pubescent Catherine be depilated.
The book was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, awarded to an Australian wiman writer - Saint Phalle now lives in Australia.
I thought it was pretentious nonsense. There are some interesting moments, and a more straightforward telling without the necessity to decode all the ancient history would have engaged me more (the young Catherine herself is a champion of the Cartheginians)
Strange, and pretentious in parts:
"I have always understood that the gods decide marriage and you can just as well be married to a swan or a bull as to a woman or a man."
"She also spends time with her painter friend, an alchemist who will die of a burst pancreas, a common death for alchemists. (You only have to read Nicolas Flamel, Fulcanelli or the divine Paracelsus to see that this is true).
It's that "only" that made me want to throw the book against the wall.
A memoir of growing up in Paris with extremely eccentric parents.
You really need a grounding in classical literature, ancient mythology and middle ages to Napoleonic French history to understand it.
Every event is wrapped in the stories Catherine's parents tell & which she uses as metaphors for their lives.
Frankly, it was boring to me.
The first 100 pages were the worst, but I broke my "can't be bothered/set it aside" rule & persisted. The second part was slightly more engaging, but not by much.
The Saint Phalles are nobles - Dad was an Anglophile Count, who ran a bank and whose fortunes waxed and waned. One moment he was buying Ming vases on a whim, another, well.... not (the times of 'lack' didn't seem to be lacking much except Ming vases). He also seems to own property in England.
The second part is Catherine's relationship with her father...he whisks her around Paris on outings, or to Bruges or elsewhere (on a whim - very strange). On Sat afternoons & Sundays he visits his wife & children (Catherine's parents aren't married).
Her mother spends her days in bed reading, mainly The Odyssey; the only time she & Catherine go out is to Guerlain, where this distinctly odd woman insists the pre-pubescent Catherine be depilated.
The book was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, awarded to an Australian wiman writer - Saint Phalle now lives in Australia.
I thought it was pretentious nonsense. There are some interesting moments, and a more straightforward telling without the necessity to decode all the ancient history would have engaged me more (the young Catherine herself is a champion of the Cartheginians)
Strange, and pretentious in parts:
"I have always understood that the gods decide marriage and you can just as well be married to a swan or a bull as to a woman or a man."
"She also spends time with her painter friend, an alchemist who will die of a burst pancreas, a common death for alchemists. (You only have to read Nicolas Flamel, Fulcanelli or the divine Paracelsus to see that this is true).
It's that "only" that made me want to throw the book against the wall.
May 26, 2017
A memoir of her childhood. Born in the 60s, her parents were not married - it was "the situation". Her mother was full of eccentricities, including not wanting to be touched, a fear of death and kleptomania. Her father played a major role in the Resistance, had many lovers, made and lost many a fortune but was devoted to his wife and youngest child. Both parents told blood thirsty stories of the Greek, Roman, and Napoleon eras. There is no doubt of Catherine's love and respect for her unusual parents.
The writing is quite poetic in parts, scholarly in others and quite dry and unemotional at times. It's a very different type of memoir.
The writing is quite poetic in parts, scholarly in others and quite dry and unemotional at times. It's a very different type of memoir.
April 6, 2017
A very high standard of prose to be sure, however, the writing is held in a constant state of cold, dispassionate seriousness. The effect of this is supposed to imbue the eccentricities of the parents with some great, sonorous, significance. Under the weight of all that the characters, Poum and Alexandre, simply collapse. They just aren't that interesting. At any point of this novel, nearly to the last page, I could have set this aside without any nagging feelings "what about ...?"
April 9, 2017
Poum and Alexandre by Catherine de Saint Phalle is a curious book. It’s a memoir, focused on Saint Phalle’s Parisian childhood with her unconventional parents, Marie-Antoinette (Poum) and Alexandre –
“The patterns of the eccentrics are often rigid. My parents have many idiosyncrasies and any new ones become instant habits. Theirs is a disciplined madness.”
The book reads like a fairy tale. Told through the eyes of eight-year-old Saint Phalle, her stories are studded with references to Greek mythology, The Odyssey, the Magna Carta, visits to Givenchy, the Napoleonic Wars and the French Resistance.
“He talks the whole time about Alexander the Great, Constantine, Caesar, Julian the Apostate. He tells me of palaces and forests, galloping horses and raped women. His voice gathers momentum and his hands seize javelins and slave girls. He canters up hills where we stare at burning cities.”
These references – both fanciful and factual – provide context and focus for Saint Phalle’s impressions of her parents, their relationship and their own seemingly troubled history.
“My mother starts talking about a ‘situation’ and stares out at my father with her shipwrecked eyes. My father talks about William the Conqueror…”
Saint Phalle refers to her parents with a mixture of awe, amazement and confusion. Although clearly aware that her parents are unlike others, her words are free of judgement, and often humorous –
“…her energy returns. It always returns near Roman ruins.”
“…the huge stone ship of Chartres is ploughing through fields of wheat. Both my parents love Chartres and go there as you would dash to the chemist’s.”
Saint Phalle’s writing is enchanting and there are moments of pure poetry –
“But fear, not victory, is my mother’s real companion. It informs her behaviour and filters all her decisions.”
“Poum’s bedroom has the atmosphere of a Russian novel.”
Although it was easy to be swept along by the lovely writing, Saint Phalle reveals that troubled, obsessive Poum, and brave, charismatic Alexandre have secrets. Rather than becoming the crux of the story, these secrets simply provide context for Poum and Alexandre’s eccentricities. What remains is an intense, memorable ode to parents who were clearly adored.
“Once Alexandre tells me: ‘Listen, if anybody asks you about your father, just say: ‘My father is a knight surfing on the crest of a wave.”
“Poum is not an easy mother, either, but when I least expect it, with a glance, with a whiff of her scent as she passes, she pours gold in my cup. Of course, like fairy gold, it doesn’t happen very often or last very long – in a second it’s gone.”
3.5/5 Magical.
“The patterns of the eccentrics are often rigid. My parents have many idiosyncrasies and any new ones become instant habits. Theirs is a disciplined madness.”
The book reads like a fairy tale. Told through the eyes of eight-year-old Saint Phalle, her stories are studded with references to Greek mythology, The Odyssey, the Magna Carta, visits to Givenchy, the Napoleonic Wars and the French Resistance.
“He talks the whole time about Alexander the Great, Constantine, Caesar, Julian the Apostate. He tells me of palaces and forests, galloping horses and raped women. His voice gathers momentum and his hands seize javelins and slave girls. He canters up hills where we stare at burning cities.”
These references – both fanciful and factual – provide context and focus for Saint Phalle’s impressions of her parents, their relationship and their own seemingly troubled history.
“My mother starts talking about a ‘situation’ and stares out at my father with her shipwrecked eyes. My father talks about William the Conqueror…”
Saint Phalle refers to her parents with a mixture of awe, amazement and confusion. Although clearly aware that her parents are unlike others, her words are free of judgement, and often humorous –
“…her energy returns. It always returns near Roman ruins.”
“…the huge stone ship of Chartres is ploughing through fields of wheat. Both my parents love Chartres and go there as you would dash to the chemist’s.”
Saint Phalle’s writing is enchanting and there are moments of pure poetry –
“But fear, not victory, is my mother’s real companion. It informs her behaviour and filters all her decisions.”
“Poum’s bedroom has the atmosphere of a Russian novel.”
Although it was easy to be swept along by the lovely writing, Saint Phalle reveals that troubled, obsessive Poum, and brave, charismatic Alexandre have secrets. Rather than becoming the crux of the story, these secrets simply provide context for Poum and Alexandre’s eccentricities. What remains is an intense, memorable ode to parents who were clearly adored.
“Once Alexandre tells me: ‘Listen, if anybody asks you about your father, just say: ‘My father is a knight surfing on the crest of a wave.”
“Poum is not an easy mother, either, but when I least expect it, with a glance, with a whiff of her scent as she passes, she pours gold in my cup. Of course, like fairy gold, it doesn’t happen very often or last very long – in a second it’s gone.”
3.5/5 Magical.
May 13, 2018
To say ‘this is a story of two flawed eccentrics’ doesn’t do Poum & Alexandre justice at all. It is so much more. Quite beautifully written. Poetic. Rich in metaphor. A philosophical work. It is also a story about Catherine herself and living within and against the conventions of the time.
This book is beautiful. I will read it again someday. A treatise on freedom of thought and action, on being happily different, on deeply connecting to culture and the virtues that matter, on rejoicing in the spirit of people unbounded by what other people think of them; especially The Man of administrative judgment, conquest and control.
Thank you Catherine de Saint Phalle.
We are the Carthaginians.
This book is beautiful. I will read it again someday. A treatise on freedom of thought and action, on being happily different, on deeply connecting to culture and the virtues that matter, on rejoicing in the spirit of people unbounded by what other people think of them; especially The Man of administrative judgment, conquest and control.
Thank you Catherine de Saint Phalle.
We are the Carthaginians.
May 23, 2017
I wasn't sure whether I was envious of or pitied young Catherine. Poum and Alexandre were an amazing, larger than life pair, and Catherine brings them to the reader with great affection. I do, however, wish the pair of them had the balls to kick Poum's egregious, free-loading family out of the door. Way to cash in on a sense of guilt.
February 17, 2017
An interesting memoir that reads more like a collection of autobiographical short stories. de Saint Phalle writes about her quirky but lovable parents in small snippets. These fit together nicely though some explanations of their quirks get a little repetitive - I think this would work best as a book that is dipped into here and there, rather than read in mostly two chunks on airplanes like I did! The structure is very lovely, with one section focused on each parent but clear echoes between the two.
April 3, 2017
Whimsical. At first I found this book difficult to understand. It was as if I was being asked to interpret a poem for English class, which I couldn't grasp. I persevered as this novel was a book club read, and I couldn't not finish.
Luckily, some way through the book, via a chapter titled "The Moon", my perspective changed and a lightbulb moment occurred. I started to enjoy reading the story of Poum, Alexandre & their daughter Catherine, and began to appreciate it as a delightful series of vignettes woven into a longer story. I enjoyed the way the characters referenced their lives against legends, myths and characters in history.
I'd give a higher rating if I'd enjoyed the book more from the start. So I'm really hovering between a 3 and four star rating.
Luckily, some way through the book, via a chapter titled "The Moon", my perspective changed and a lightbulb moment occurred. I started to enjoy reading the story of Poum, Alexandre & their daughter Catherine, and began to appreciate it as a delightful series of vignettes woven into a longer story. I enjoyed the way the characters referenced their lives against legends, myths and characters in history.
I'd give a higher rating if I'd enjoyed the book more from the start. So I'm really hovering between a 3 and four star rating.
March 11, 2019
The book is beautifully written, and it certainly subverts the chronological memoir genre. It shuttles backwards and forwards, and tells events from multiple perspectives. It withholds as much as it gives. And yet at the end of the book, you realize just how much Catherine has given you as a reader, and you are left with a puzzling and yet rich view of her parents - much how the author herself finds herself. This is a challenging memoir, but I suspect that I will remember it long after the 'misery memoirs' have merged one into another.
For my complete review visit:
residentjudge.com/2019/03/11/poum-and...
For my complete review visit:
residentjudge.com/2019/03/11/poum-and...
April 16, 2020
This book is a loving memoir of the author's childhood and her unusual parents, two quite unique individuals who created an isolated but beautiful life for their only child. The digressive style of writing and use of ancient stories to relate events in the lives of Catherine and her parents was interesting, required concentration but was a lovely immersion in an alternative reality that I enjoyed very much.
August 27, 2017
I loved this book! It is beautifully written and the author's love for her parents and understanding of them comes across so strongly in the book. Each memory is a piece of the picture that is her childhood and Paris at the time. It is a story made of many little stories that makes for a mesmerising whole.
April 25, 2024
What a beautiful book. I was three chapters in before I realised I wasn't reading fiction; this is the memoir of Catherine de Saint Phalle reflecting on her childhood with her two eccentric parents, Poum (Marie-Antoinette) and Alexandre, in 1960's Paris. Poum and Alexandre meet during WWII; Alexandre in the French resistance and Poum working at the Spanish embassy. Catherine shares her memories of growing up with what appear to be two children. Indeed, while Poum and Alexandre are incredible company, there are times when you think these two should not be raising a child - for example, when Alexandre teaches Catherine how to cross Paris traffic with her eyes closed, or when he talks of getting an exemption to marry her off at the age of 14.
Overshadowing the life of this little family is "the situation" and it doesn't take long to work out that Alexandre is married to some else, with several grown children. They are ostracized by both sides of the family, although Catherine is astute enough to sense that "the situation" impacts Poum more than Alexandre.
Both parents are obsessed with ancient history, the more gruesome the story the better they seem to like it. Stories from the ancient world are woven throughout the little dramas that unfold around this family, along with a smattering of tales of the resistance and the great Napoleon.
There is so much affection in this book and de Saint Phalle's written is so poetic. This is just a beautiful book, full of good company. HIghly recommend.
Overshadowing the life of this little family is "the situation" and it doesn't take long to work out that Alexandre is married to some else, with several grown children. They are ostracized by both sides of the family, although Catherine is astute enough to sense that "the situation" impacts Poum more than Alexandre.
Both parents are obsessed with ancient history, the more gruesome the story the better they seem to like it. Stories from the ancient world are woven throughout the little dramas that unfold around this family, along with a smattering of tales of the resistance and the great Napoleon.
There is so much affection in this book and de Saint Phalle's written is so poetic. This is just a beautiful book, full of good company. HIghly recommend.
July 19, 2018
The curiosities of Poum, the enigmatic bibliophile, crippled by catholic guilt and Alexandre, the soft centrered gourmand are brought to light through fragments of their observant but naive daughter Catherine's memory of her peculiar childhood. The glorious prose contains a resplendent array of metaphors and turns of phrases that are truly evocative of the mysteries of childhood.
My major criticism of this beautiful memoir is the overuse of retelling of Roman and French mythologies. I felt they caused some lulls in the flow, which were avoidable in my opinion.
In Poum and Alexandre, Catherine has reimagined the possibilities of a memoir. This being a work of grand literary panache.
My major criticism of this beautiful memoir is the overuse of retelling of Roman and French mythologies. I felt they caused some lulls in the flow, which were avoidable in my opinion.
In Poum and Alexandre, Catherine has reimagined the possibilities of a memoir. This being a work of grand literary panache.
October 18, 2018
I saw this at the Adelaide writers festival almost 2 years ago. I missed seeing her talk and the blurb sounded interesting. I finally got it out of the library. This is a quirky memoir remembering a youth brought up by two very eccentric and elderly parents in the UK and later Paris. Our heroine has a nanny that she loves and parents that give their wisdom through stories of the Ceasars and Odysseus. The memoir part circling around her parents was interesting, but I got lost when she switched gears to talk about characters out of the past histories, while meaning her relations. I was still glad to have read this.
May 24, 2019
This book is difficult to piece together at times, and I'd probably have given it 4.5 if I could have, but it deserves more than a 4 and more than the 3.5 average it currently sits at. It took me two attempts over two years to read it, but once I was in - I finished it quickly. Catherine takes a fragmented childhood and pieces it together with strands of liquid gold. The references to classical texts can be difficult at first, but they are valuable. This is a beautifully tender novel about two incredibly interesting people, Parisien eccentrics to the core, and is absolutely worth reading.
May 7, 2017
What an unusual childhood Catherine de Saint Phalle had! This memoir is beautifully written and a delight to read.
June 6, 2017
Beautiful prose ... but
nothing
happens.....
at all.
nothing
happens.....
at all.
February 21, 2017
This was a riveting, beautifully written memoir. Poum and Alexander live in their own world, by their own rules and enrich their lives with reflections on mythology and remembrances of history both recent and ancient. Their Parisian love story began just after the war and Occupied Paris still haunts their lives. The story is told from the perspective of Catherine, their only child. She introduces us to these extraordinary, eccentric characters in a book that is both beautiful and disturbing.
December 17, 2017
My Non-fiction book of the year 2017. This is a gloriously enchanting read. It's a memoir of Katherine De Saint Phalle's childhood in 1960s Paris, with two sections, one on her mother Poum, the other on her father Alexandre. Subtly constructed, sometimes we see the same event twice, through different parents' responses. I'd be wary of giving this to any current young parents, trying to be the responsible and reliable creatures the modern Western world expects. Poum and Alexandre are totally the opposite of that - wickedly moody, careless of others, neglectful of their daughter in today's terms. And yet Katherine has a fantastic time with them! (Her English nanny Sylvia helps fill in any gaps.) She feels enormously loved, and is fully engaged with the scraps of their lives they throw her. She is constantly taught the important things in life - about what we can learn from the past in classical literature and history, and about the importance of family relationships. So what happens in her young life is fascinating enough, but it's the way the author tells us about it that is so astonishingly powerful. Her recall and recreation of a child's view of the world is authentically innocent and entertainingly wise. Descriptions of experiences and accounts of conversations just dance across the page in a mixture of the gothic and M. Hulot. Her mother has those Spanish connections of pain and blood to share with her child - while her father is shown in writing which brings all the images of 1960s Paris to life on the page. Read the accounts of his carefree time driving to get the full effect. It's easy to read, a funny and charming book. It was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2016. It's fascinating to think Katherine is now transplanted to Australia. I loved her memoir, the best read of the year for me so far!
October 22, 2017
"...she is taking me to the Les Halles market in the dark belly of Paris. Soon the quarter will be gutted to create the present soulless mall it has become. We take a bus and another bus and step down into darkness. The streets are narrow and the cobblestones slippery. Criminals, butchers, florists, greengrocers and prostitutes hobnob happily. But my mother trips unconcernedly through the dark alleys, smiling at skimpily clad women and at black-coated men who sell her armloads of flowers for a few francs. Then she casts me a glance. ‘We have to have a Viandox.’My mother hates meat. But here, because it’s obviously a tradition for her, she walks into one of the tiny bistrots and settles her two elbows on the zinc, that soft, dull, silvery metal all real French cafés have on their bars, and asks for two Viandox. The dense café’s egg-yolk-yellow light gleams off sweaty cheeks and sharp eyes –it even seems to ricochet off belly laughs and catcalls."
November 30, 2016
Poum and Alexandre requires focus and concentration to fully appreciate the writing and keep track of the literary references to the Odyssey made at regular intervals. Once reading momentum is achieved, it is easy to be captivated by Catherine's eccentric and unconventional parents. Though her upbringing is different to many, we become as attached to her mother and father as she becomes to the extent that by the end of the memoir, we feel their deaths and separation from them as keenly as she does. Larger than life figures such as these two rarely come along, that alone to the same child.
Take the time to engage with this account and you will not be disappointed.
Take the time to engage with this account and you will not be disappointed.
December 3, 2018
It did take me a little while before I really got into this book but once I did I loved it. The language is gorgeous.
March 30, 2017
Enchanting.
April 8, 2017
Catherine de Saint Phalle writes beautifully. This book often reads more like poetry than prose. A lovely reflection on Paris and unusual parents.
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May 2, 2017I haven't written a review of this book yet because I'm not quite sure what I made of it. I enjoy biography and am a sucker for all things French but I agree with the first two or three of the reviewers, eg Kate, that it is a curious book. In spite of the imaginative language to evoke the quirky parents, these characters didn't really come alive for me. I'll keep thinking on it!
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