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Meet Me At Pere Lachaise: A Self-Guided Walking Tour in Paris
An entertaining walk through the most famous graves in the most visited cemetery in the world. Find Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Moliere, Colette, and over forty more of the most talented and intriguing people the world has known. Meet Me At Pere Lachaise's walking tour makes lust, murder and passion the prefect day in Paris!
Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
Anna Erikssön Bendewald
5 books52 followers“Keep your arms and legs inside the gondola at all times! The VENICE TRILOGY is one wild ride!”
Anna Erikssön Bendewald’s writing style has been described "It’s as if Anna were Quentin Tarantino and Robert Altman's love child. Her lush destination thrillers THE VENICE TRILOGY do indeed have a similar theatrical build to an ultimate breathless pace that gives readers quite a romp.” Readers with a more romantic nature have tend to pay closer attention to the spicier story line while fans to thriller and police procedural genres lose themselves in the main thrust of the trilogy – a fight to the death for power in Venice that sucks in the Pope, the Vatican and the Sicilian Mafia.
STEALING VENICE has been described as “50 Shades of DaVinci Code” much to Anna’s Delight!
Anna decided that at age 46, she was ready to offer the characters and stories that swirl around her head to the public. STEALING VENICE was born when she and her husband adopted their Mandarin-speaking daughters from Taiwan, she quit her corporate job to be a stay-at-home mother. Their early days of bonding and teaching them English (from their native Mandarin) kept her busy. But while they were in school and swimming lessons, Anna was busily writing Stealing Venice on her laptop. Initially the story featured graphic sex and more than once she stopped cheering her girls’ efforts in the pool only to notice the horrified look on a face of a parent nearby who had read the words on her screen. She has since decided to remove the more graphic content and leave something to the readers’ imaginations.
Anna has also written a guidebook to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, Meet Me At Père Lachaise a self-guided walking tour with plenty of dishy details about the lust, passion and murder of the most famous people buried there. She loves traveling, eating, and reading –not in that order.
Anna Erikssön Bendewald’s writing style has been described "It’s as if Anna were Quentin Tarantino and Robert Altman's love child. Her lush destination thrillers THE VENICE TRILOGY do indeed have a similar theatrical build to an ultimate breathless pace that gives readers quite a romp.” Readers with a more romantic nature have tend to pay closer attention to the spicier story line while fans to thriller and police procedural genres lose themselves in the main thrust of the trilogy – a fight to the death for power in Venice that sucks in the Pope, the Vatican and the Sicilian Mafia.
STEALING VENICE has been described as “50 Shades of DaVinci Code” much to Anna’s Delight!
Anna decided that at age 46, she was ready to offer the characters and stories that swirl around her head to the public. STEALING VENICE was born when she and her husband adopted their Mandarin-speaking daughters from Taiwan, she quit her corporate job to be a stay-at-home mother. Their early days of bonding and teaching them English (from their native Mandarin) kept her busy. But while they were in school and swimming lessons, Anna was busily writing Stealing Venice on her laptop. Initially the story featured graphic sex and more than once she stopped cheering her girls’ efforts in the pool only to notice the horrified look on a face of a parent nearby who had read the words on her screen. She has since decided to remove the more graphic content and leave something to the readers’ imaginations.
Anna has also written a guidebook to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, Meet Me At Père Lachaise a self-guided walking tour with plenty of dishy details about the lust, passion and murder of the most famous people buried there. She loves traveling, eating, and reading –not in that order.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 4, 2011
It amazes me that there isn't an English-language coffee table book full of beautiful photos of Paris's Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Not only is the cemetery historically significant (it was the first nonsectarian metropolitan cemetery), not only is it full of personages from Moliere to Jim Morrison, it is breathtakingly lovely.
Mason Bendewald's crisp black-and-white photos in this little book are a step toward filling that gap. Pere Lachaise can be tricky to photograph, since it is so full of monuments, but Bendewald gets around that with low angles or tight focus. I hope he'll go on to produce another, larger book of cemetery photos.
Anna Erisson's text breezes through the history of the cemetery in order to focus on its permanent denizens. While I thought that wouldn't particularly interest me, I actually learned a fair number of new things. I hadn't realized Marcel Marceau (nee Mangel) lost his father to Auschwitz and learned miming while keeping the orphans quiet as they escaped the Nazis. I didn't know the name of the sculptor who created the original bust for Morrison's grave: Croatian Mladen Mikulin. I was curious about the Monument aux Morts and Etienne-Gaspard "Robertson" Robert's monument with its bat-winged skulls and relief of demons and ghosts menacing an audience.
Most impressive was Erisson's insistence on respectful behavior in the cemetery. She comments that Max Factor is footing the bill to remove the lipstick kisses from Oscar Wilde's monument and laments the graffiti that surrounds Morrison's grave, while recognizing that people want to connect with their idols. She recommends bringing real flowers rather than plastic ones that will end up as landfill. When she visits Proust, she leaves a pencil. When she visits Brillat-Savarin (author of the first gastronomic essays), she brings a recipe on a recyclable card, hoping that another visitor will take it along and try it at home. She also travels with a sack, so that she can pick up garbage on her visits.
While Meet Me at Pere Lachaise isn't the book for which I am looking, it has whetted my appetite to return to Pere Lachaise -- exactly the purpose for which it was written.
Mason Bendewald's crisp black-and-white photos in this little book are a step toward filling that gap. Pere Lachaise can be tricky to photograph, since it is so full of monuments, but Bendewald gets around that with low angles or tight focus. I hope he'll go on to produce another, larger book of cemetery photos.
Anna Erisson's text breezes through the history of the cemetery in order to focus on its permanent denizens. While I thought that wouldn't particularly interest me, I actually learned a fair number of new things. I hadn't realized Marcel Marceau (nee Mangel) lost his father to Auschwitz and learned miming while keeping the orphans quiet as they escaped the Nazis. I didn't know the name of the sculptor who created the original bust for Morrison's grave: Croatian Mladen Mikulin. I was curious about the Monument aux Morts and Etienne-Gaspard "Robertson" Robert's monument with its bat-winged skulls and relief of demons and ghosts menacing an audience.
Most impressive was Erisson's insistence on respectful behavior in the cemetery. She comments that Max Factor is footing the bill to remove the lipstick kisses from Oscar Wilde's monument and laments the graffiti that surrounds Morrison's grave, while recognizing that people want to connect with their idols. She recommends bringing real flowers rather than plastic ones that will end up as landfill. When she visits Proust, she leaves a pencil. When she visits Brillat-Savarin (author of the first gastronomic essays), she brings a recipe on a recyclable card, hoping that another visitor will take it along and try it at home. She also travels with a sack, so that she can pick up garbage on her visits.
While Meet Me at Pere Lachaise isn't the book for which I am looking, it has whetted my appetite to return to Pere Lachaise -- exactly the purpose for which it was written.
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November 28, 2010I am SOOOOOOOOO excited to find that this book was written. The author has an eclectic but profound style. It is on my list to visit Pere LaChaise next time I go to Europe. Heloise and Abelard from the 12th century are buried there and I have read a lot about them. The great photos in this book made me feel as if I was already entering this amazing place. I could not put the book down and keep going back to it. Great resource.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 3, 2020
Lovely Back Stories
I gave 3 stars because there's 300-500K buried at Pere LeChaise and she focused on only a hand full and 120 pages. The place is the world's most famous final resting place of notables. I just expected and wanted more! The back stories were certainly interesting, though.
I gave 3 stars because there's 300-500K buried at Pere LeChaise and she focused on only a hand full and 120 pages. The place is the world's most famous final resting place of notables. I just expected and wanted more! The back stories were certainly interesting, though.
September 4, 2021
Brought back many good memories. The accompanying text is succinct and interesting, but the photos are the best part. A very classy little book.
February 27, 2013
I picked up this book because I am a history junkie. In preparation for a European trip that my husband and I are going to take in the next few years, I've started researching the best historical places to visit. We're definitely going to visit Pere Lachaise, and I'm going to bring this book with us.
The authors perfectly match the mood of what I imagine the cemetery to be like with their prose and images. For people who are more interested with the experience of the cemetery, Anna Eriksson and Mason Bendewald organized their book into guided tour for people to follow along with when they visit.
For people like me who will not be visiting for a while but who are still interested in the story of the cemetery and those who are buried inside, this book is still a great buy. Some of the famous folks who have been laid to rest in Pere Lachaise include Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Gertrude Stein. Eriksson wraps the historical facts about the cemetery into stories, and I experienced the cemetery through her eyes. She also notes in the intro that she first visited Pere Lachaise when she was 14 years old. You can feel her love of this place ooze from the book, and her enthusiasm is contagious.
The authors perfectly match the mood of what I imagine the cemetery to be like with their prose and images. For people who are more interested with the experience of the cemetery, Anna Eriksson and Mason Bendewald organized their book into guided tour for people to follow along with when they visit.
For people like me who will not be visiting for a while but who are still interested in the story of the cemetery and those who are buried inside, this book is still a great buy. Some of the famous folks who have been laid to rest in Pere Lachaise include Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Gertrude Stein. Eriksson wraps the historical facts about the cemetery into stories, and I experienced the cemetery through her eyes. She also notes in the intro that she first visited Pere Lachaise when she was 14 years old. You can feel her love of this place ooze from the book, and her enthusiasm is contagious.
April 23, 2016
Collection of evocative photos of Pere Lachaise cemetery in the heart of Paris ... while the prose is rather pedestrian, the individual biographies of people buried there are informative and wide-ranging ... definitely a book to take along if you're planning on a visit ...
January 31, 2017
A nice little book about some of the graves in Pere Lachaise. It covers artists, composers, and others who are honored in this cemetery. It is a good book to take with if you are heading there. There so many graves and sculptures to see there, this book only touches on a few.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews