Following on from Helen Constantine's hugely
successful Paris Tales, the twenty-two short stories
included in More Metro Tales take the reader on an
fascinating journey around Paris by metro. The journey
begins at the Gare du Nord, stops at twenty underground
stations along the way, and ends at
Lamarck-Caulaincourt. Some of these stories actually
take place in the metro itself, but most are to be found
when you emerge above ground. They range from the
15th-century account of the miraculous Saint Genevieve,
patron saint of Paris, through tales by favourite
writers such as Zola, Simenon, and Maupassant, to
Martine Delerm's evocation of the last hours of
Modigliani's mistress, Jeanne Hebuterne. Gerard de
Nerval evokes the thriving, bustling market in Les
Halles in the 1850s; Colette recounts her involvement in
a traffic accident near the Opera; Boulanger describes a
blackly funny experience in Pere Lachaise. Each story is
illustrated with a black-and-white photograph and there
is a map and suggested itinerary round the metro
system.Readers will find familiar and unfamiliar writers
here, but all are masterly writers of the short story
and each evokes a different aspect of this endlessly
intriguing and much-loved city, whether the traveller is
on the metro or at home sitting in an armchair. |
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