I Will Always Have Paris

It pains me to say this but I did not love Paris: A Love Story. The memoir is written by Kati Marton who is an award-winning journalist, the ex-wife of Peter Jennings and a former foreign news correspondent and it is meant to be a tale of her love affair(s) both in and with Paris. As the title indicates, Paris is the backdrop for many of her life stories: her first torrid love affair, her foray into the man’s world of news 
correspondence, her first encounter with Ms Barbara Walters, her jet-setting career filled with shoulder rubbing a la rich and famous and her penultimate love affair (the city itself being the ultimate, n’est pas?) In summary, it sounds exactly-like-my-kind-of-book. And again, it pains me to say this but, it wasn’t.

Instead of an intimate portrayal of a city that so many have fallen in love with, myself included, instead of a story of heartbreak, of romance, of lust and loss, it reads like a memoir that someone was paid to write. From name-dropping of both the celebrity and political type to sentences that drip with forced romance (“I am drawn to you like Pooh to his honey”) and historical commentary not-so-furtively laced with network associations (both Marton and Jennings worked for ABC) the memoir reads like a commissioned report where the instructor has indicate in no uncertain terms which components should be included.

As a result, it is hard to read any of the story as authentic. I’m not saying I don’t believe that Kati loved Jennings or that she loved Paris or that she was lost when her second husband Richard Holbrooke died but I did not feel any attachment to her or the characters in her life (or even her Paris!) since the constant plugs served to create an ever-widening distance between reader and page.

In retrospect, even the back cover seems manipulated: two out of the three reviews were written by one-time ABC journalists (the third by Diane Von Furstenburg……). I’m not sure who is stuffing whom’s coffers with this book but I’m left with a bit of an acrid taste in my mouth.

Of course this has not ruined my own love affair with Paris or the genre of memoirs but I’m definitely putting this in my kitty under “how not to write a memoir.”

If you’re looking for a visceral read that will leave you feeling like you’ve just lived the millions lives of the narrator, check out any of the following memoirs:

Lies My Mother Never Told Me by Kaylie Jones

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Glass Castle by Jeanette Wallis

Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

~ kate