Our Own Piece of Paris

by Ellie Nielsen, Ellie Nielson

Paris has seduced many, but for Ellie Nielsen, it's true love. So deep was her infatuation with the city that, if she couldn't have it all to herself, she simply had to buy her own little piece of it. This is an account of one couple's attempt to buy their dream flat in Paris.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, France, Paris, Memoir, Audiobook, Contemporary

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm honestly not sure why I finished this book. The main character was one of the most annoying characters ever, & it was just boring. I guess it was such an easy read I decided to just finish it anway, but I found the main character's constant stream of thoughts very disjointed & I just wanted her to get over herself. Maybe I persevered because I bought this book at a market on my honeymoon so there was sentimentality keeping me going. But it was definitely nothing special.

[Fiona · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, I don’t have time for this book, and unless you’re short on Paris nostalgia, neither do you. It’s like a long, narrative form of an episode of House Hunters International, with a bit of Escape to the Country thrown in. And it’s boring. Spend your time reading about actual Paris - there’s more than enough good travel writing without wasting your time on this.

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this so much. I think, just outside of the basic beauty of the prose, it was so REAL. This wasn't a perfectionist view of Paris. This was real and showed the difficulties of the language, the culture, and everything in between. I loved it!

[Arianna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the taste of Paris with this book, but I wasn't ever totally sold on an entire book about real estate, even when paired with the many truly Parisian experiences that the book touched on. As humorous as Nielson was at times, she got annoying with her flippancy and the way she made drama out of absolutely everything. (Mon dieu! The railing is blue! How can that be?!?) Honestly. It was overall a cute book, though, but one I would not have spent my time on had it not been recommended. Despite it being about France, it is just really not my sort of book, in the long run. It was too...fluffy. And honestly, do I really care whether a rich Australian woman succeeded in buying an apartment, a second home, in Paris? At least she pointed out how poor she had been and how they had come into the money from an inheritance. Otherwise the book would have annoyed me even more: the travails of a rich woman trying to decide how to spend half a million euros! C'est si horrible!

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could have done without it. Cover is the best part!

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok. I'll keep it for my library, but nothing I'd re-read. Loved the cover art...but just an ok book for me.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this - just like being there in Paris.

[Janinne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring. Bought a used copy at a thrift store. Glad I didn't buy full price new.

[Chris Lindert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I confess to not reading the cover very carefully when I purchased this memoir, which I had just assumed was another love story set in Paris. And, what’s not to love about one of those books? The surprise in discovering that it was instead a memoir of Ellie Nielsen’s quest to buy an apartment in Paris was truly delightful. She, with the support of her husband Jack and son Ellery, sets out - having set themselves a two week timeline before they finished their holiday in France to return to work in Melbourne - despite having friends living in Paris has little understanding of the enormity of the task until she has started. Reading this memoir allows you to wander the Paris streets with Ellie, to relive the beauty of this city if you have been fortunate enough to have visited it, or to start to be tempted to go there if you have not. With her temerity, and her ‘Franglais’, she finds ‘immobiliers’ - real estate agents - and views their offerings with varying degrees of pleasure. Champagne hours are mixed with crushing disappointments. Throughout these she concludes that ‘it’s really our journey that shows us who we are - the destination, after all, is the same for all of us.’ Following Ellie’s journey was a real pleasure. I do, highly recommend it to fellow readers - whatever genre you would normally prefer.

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ehh. I'm a fan of travel narratives and house narratives, but this fell quite flat for me. The premise: Nielsen and her husband, on holiday from Australia, allowed themselves two weeks in which to find a second home to buy in Paris. The logic is never quite explained: Nielsen loves Paris and thus wants to own part of it, I guess, and her husband thinks it'll be a good investment. But the tension feels...I'm not sure if 'false' is the right word here, but what are the stakes? If they don't find a flat to buy, then...the next time they vacation in Paris they'll have to rent again or find a hotel. It's not clear that they're likely to be back in Paris until the following year, anyway, and Nielsen's husband grumbles at the idea of flying back and forth on the regular. There's a lot of emphasis on the importance of 'enough space', but I am left wondering...why? Why does a family with one child need three bedrooms for their once-a-year holiday home? It's telling to me that, although they claim to want the 'real' Paris, they don't object when a local says no, no, you don't want that arrondissement, tourists are bored there.

The book ends when a flat comes through. It's not all that much of a surprise that something works out (because would Nielsen have gotten a book deal out of it otherwise?), but it's disappointing to see only the build-up to the second home and not to see any of what comes after. Did they go visit the next year? Did they end up selling the flat again? Who exactly was Julia, and what was she doing there? (It took me most of the book to figure out that she probably wasn't their nanny.) Sort of feels as though, if she'd dialled back the forced humour and tepid cultural misunderstandings, there might have been time to explore something a bit more complex.

[Cara Bride · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book after my heart! As a lover of all things French, especially Paris, I reveled in the story, the language I was so thrilled to understand, and could just imagine being there attempting to live a dream!
Written honestly and at times breathless, I felt like I was right there too, and remembered so many of the places mentioned - just loved it.

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years ago, as my husband and I contemplated a move to Paris, I read this book. Absolutely fun and engaging. Opened my eyes to what it really might be like. We changed our minds, but still, this book was a riot.

[Michelle Urquhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a slightly charming piece of self indulgence by the author. She had some fun things to say about buying an apartment in Paris, but at the end of the day, it wasn't that good a story.

[Susan White-Riggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was was ok, not the most stellar writing-but I am glad they found their "piece of Paris"

[Stacey Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Paris. It is a truly remarkable city, so I understand the author's fixation with owning a piece real estate in the City of Light. She comes face to face with the patronizing nature of French Real estate agencies who only show her apartments no fashionable French person would set foot in, let alone purchase, subjected to inpromptu french lessons from everyone she comes in contact with from waiters to florists and, finally pushy 'won't take no for an answer' realtors. Imagine that, wanting to see an apartment before making an offer?? You get a superficial look at several neighborhoods (or arrondisements) in Paris, lots of french language lessons and restaurant and shopping suggestions of where the natives go, or don't go, to pick up groceries, furniture and a good cup of coffee. Its a fun read that allows you to live vicariously through the author and still keep over $400K (euro) in your genuine Chanel, Prada or Gucci bag.

[Josie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Light-hearted and amusing! I very much enjoyed seeing Paris from an Australian's point of view (i.e. without the inevitable sniping that would come from a British writer). Ellie Nielsen is in love with the city of light! Everything is wonderful! She can choose whether to have a chequebook that opens comme çi or comme ça! And she does make it sound like a fantastic dream, meeting all sorts of characters and having real-estate adventures.

Note: there's a fair bit of untranslated French in this book, but I managed to keep up with my schoolgirl French. There were occasions when my brain was slow to translate, though. I saw the word cadeau and read it as corpse (perhaps because it looked like cadaver?) and it was a few moments before my brain kicked in and reminded me that cadeau = gift...

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ellie and her husband Jack are looking to buy an apartment in Paris as a vacation home. They're from Melbourne Australia.

Nielsen takes us through the entire two-week process, every minute and tedious detail. The conversations in French were not translated most of the time, which I found highly annoying. Characters were thrown in without any explanation of their relationship to the writer. I kept feeling like an interloper in a stranger's dull conversation. If she'd been telling me this story I would have tuned out five minutes in.

The book was poorly written and edited. I gave it two stars for the mere fact that Neilsen was able to complete the book before boring herself to death. To sum it up, sorry to say, merde. There are other books on Paris that are far better.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ellie Nielsen, an Australian, writes about her two week quest to buy the quintessential Parisian apartment. She has difficulty describing it (charming? full of character?) but is sure she'll know it as soon as she crosses the threshold. This is usually my kind of vicarious read but instead I found myself feeling ever so slightly annoyed since it sometimes seemed as if writing the book was actually the real reason for buying the apartment. Still, I found the glimpses of the Parisian real estate market and the intrigue of will they find the right place before they have to head back to Melbourne enough to keep me entertained and reading past midnight.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a fast, breezy read - I think I read the whole thing in under two hours. No big surprises or even conflicts, but I enjoyed the process - anyone who has tried to negotiate the red tape of French bureaucracy will find this book very true to life.

I see others have commented about not liking that the French isn't translated - I actually really liked that. (And I didn't think the French was so prevalent or essential that you couldn't just skip it if you couldn't read it.)

I had a bit of a jaw-drop when I realized they were spending 500K+ on a vacation home, but I guess if you've got it, spend it!

[Stephanie (Stepping Out Of The Page) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, so it was a little bit charming, but it was nothing exciting at all. It seemed quite repetitive and as though it was going nowhere. I did like the ending, but it seemed to drag on in order to get to those final few sentences. The whole book seemed a little bit impulsive and I felt as though it was really quite basic. It did give an insight into France and living in Paris, but I was hoping to actually see the book progress past the purchase of the appartment and not just stop there. An easy (though I'm saying this knowing French language) but unexceptional book.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a charming book. It was a humorous story of how Ellie Nielsen buys an apartment in Paris and all the ups and downs of the purchase. It was exhausting and exhilerating reading about her adventure. I have always wanted to buy and apartment in Paris also, but think I will just stick to RENTING an apartment when I visit. It was fun to read about her struggling with her French in order to communicate with the real estate agents (although she was pretty well versed) and she described each apartment in so much detail you felt that you were right there with her. Fun read!

[Suzka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blerg. I appreciate that it's totally autobiographical, and that she ended up getting what she set out to do. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER! (Sorry. Are you trying to tell me you couldn't tell that she'd get it, just by looking at the cover?) I appreciate the passion and drive, but it was kinda tedious.

I picked this up at the library, only because it was on the counter (having just been returned) and the other book I was taking out was non-fiction and much less entertain-y.

Blerg.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful - but I am a travel memoir junkie. This young Australian couple apparently inherited a boatload of money from the author's mother and search for a pied a terre to call their own in Paris. A fun read and I would be insanely jealous if Ellie didn't seem like a nice sort and not spoiled by her good fortune. This is a short, fast read - and as satisfying as a cafe creme with pain au chocolat.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellie's story is so much fun! No, there are no literary prizes being awarded here (I doubt that Nielsen is operates under any false pretentions) but for sheer Francophilian pleasure, don't overlook this one. Nielson graciously wears her uncomplicated, Australian heart of her sleeve, and delivers her observations in a highly readable fashion. I had a lovely time accompanying Ellie on her hunt for the perfect piece of Paris.

[Erica Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across this book a couple of years ago in a museum shop, but did not pick it up – the premise stayed with me, however, and I finally went searching for the book to satisfy my curiosity – and I am glad that I did. An easy and pleasant read, the story of a family’s search for the perfect apartment in Paris was in turns entertaining and charming. Though the book ended with the purchase, I certainly hope they have been happy living in their little piece of Paris.

[Turi Becker · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun journey through an Australian couple's looking for and eventually buying an apartment in Paris. I love reading books like this, partly for the little details of everyday French life, but also to hear the enthusiasm of someone who's so in love with France. I hope Ellie Nielsen writes a follow-up about settling into their new place.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like reading anything about Europe, so the title caught my attention. I have always thought it would be fun to like in France. However, listening to this book and also watching House Hunters International on HGTV, I am not sure my dreams of living in another country will match any reality I would find! A few hundred thousand doesn't get you much real estate in Paris.

[Maureen Mclelland · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who will be travelling to Paris in a few weeks, I appreciated reading about the city from an outsider who is desperate to become an insider. The tale of a pretty fortunate/ entitled Australian who is trying to find the perfect apartment. The book provides great glimpses of the Paris attitude and so many funny little vignettes of life in the city of love.

[Rhode PVD · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, she has tons of money and is able to buy a nice apartment which she can only visit rarely. This is the kind of person who makes Paris so expensive for people who live there. It was an annoying book. That said, having real estate shopped myself abroad, it was interesting to see how different things are from country to country.

[Rosie Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

The adventures and mishaps of an Australian woman and her husband as they search for a Parisian apartment to call their own. You must know some French as it is sprinkled throughout with no translations.Charming and funny.