Introduction

"Not every true story is like a good novel, but this one is. Not every memoir of first love has a satisfying ending, but this one does. The confluence of first love with becoming an artist makes this memoir special." —John Irving PARIS, 1976: Twenty-year-old American student Julie Scolnik had just arrived in the City of Light to study the flute when, from across a sea of faces in the chorus of the Orchestre de Paris, she is drawn to Luc, a striking (married) French lawyer in the bass section. This moving tale of an ebullient young American and a reserved Frenchman will transport readers to the cafés, streets, and concert halls of Paris in the late seventies, and, spanning three decades, evolves from deep romance to sudden heartbreak, and finally to a lifelong quest for answers to release hidden, immutable grief. Against a magical backdrop of Paris and classical music, Paris Blue is true fairy-tale memoir (with a dark underbelly) about the tenacious grip of first love.

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Excerpt

And when the music began, I was transported. Seated on risers just behind the Orchestre de Paris, we were able to watch Daniel Barenboim’s communicative gestures and facial expressions as he conducted. This was thrilling for me, as Barenboim was a legend, and I had revered him for years. I sang easily and let the music fill my chest. Unfortunately, I lost sight of my crush, as a massive boys’ choir was seated between the men and women of the chorus.

When the concert was over, tremendous applause brought the soloists and Barenboim back on stage for curtain calls. It surprised me that the chorus left the stage just as chaotically as members of the orchestra, with everyone squeezing through the crowded hallways backstage. Some members were lining up in the stairwells, others streaming into elevators to return to the underground levels to grab their coats.

Suddenly my handsome bass was brushing right past me. His face was just inches from mine, but he didn’t see me, intent as he was on making his way through the crowd. It was the first time I had ever seen him up close, and the effect was no less intoxicating than if I had just imbibed a mythical love potion.

I followed this stranger with my eyes through the crowds, and watched his tall figure head for the staircase to leave. By the time I started climbing the stairs, he had just made the turn at the landing in the opposite direction. As I looked up, he looked down, and our eyes met. He sighed with an exasperated “bof ” as if to complain about the many stairs, and I smiled. I was hoping that he, too, would exit at level -1, to take the metro home, but when I opened the stage door to the concourse, he was gone.

My high spirits from the concert only marginally dampened, I headed toward the metro in my tweed cape, wrapping my white alpaca scarf loosely around my neck three times and tucking the ends into the collar without freeing my long hair. After the twenty-minute metro ride, I sauntered home more slowly than usual. I let myself into the apartment with my unwieldy iron key, walked silently down the hallway to my room, and stood in front of the antique mirror over the mantel without removing my coat. What did I look like to that stranger on the stairs? My cheeks were rosy and my eyes glassy from the cold walk home. For once I didn’t turn on the radio—it was too much of a distraction. Instead, I washed up and undressed slowly, crawled in between the sheets of my low, narrow bed, and went to sleep with the image of his face in my dreams. It was inside me, somehow, like a phrase of music so beautiful I knew I would need to hear it again, or a painting that stayed with me without my knowing why. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1) Can you discuss the role of the color Blue in the book?

2) Can you discuss the role of memory in the book and how the author believes it is connected to love, music, and life?

3) Wordsworth poem, what weight do you think it plays in the book and in Scolnik’s introspection at the end? Can you discuss why Scolnik used the poem in two places, and how it evokes the essence of the book?

4) What do you think happened with Luc in Boston? How was it possible that he changed so much? Even though it is clear that Scolnik still never understood herself.

5) Have any book club members had similar experiences of sharing music with someone and associating certain pieces with certain periods in their life? Discuss the role of music and why one author said of the book, “Paris Blue captures the power of words, music and Paris to drive love to madness.”

6) Why do you think this book has been resonating across boundaries of gender, age, and sexual orientation?

Weblinks

»	Author's website
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»	Watch the author interview on Youtube

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