Art and Paris memories flow from A Paris Year, by Janice MacLeod. I found this book just as the Covid-19 pandemic nudged into our consciousness. Days later, I regretfully cancelled a planned “April in Paris/Tulip season in the Netherlands” trip. Instead of walking the streets of Paris myself, I read Janice’s book, a delightful guide to the vicarious delights of France’s most famous city.
Too small to be a “coffee-table book,” A Paris Year is definitely gorgeous enough to be one. Printed on luxurious paper, the pages display MacLeod’s musings, photos, drawings and watercolors from her year living in the City of Light. The author shares her relaxed wanderings as she drinks thick, rich hot chocolate at a café table, collects old postcards at the flea market, snaps photos of art work and creepy gargoyles, and hints at her attraction to the neighborhood butcher. Designed to resemble an artist’s journal with a font that evokes hand written notes, the pages are dotted with coffee spills and the circular imprints of wine glasses. A Year in Paris is a book to inspire the artist an
d the traveler in you. I especially loved the occasional samples of watercolor hues found next to photos. These little rows of color squares hint at paintings waiting to be created.
My pleasure in this lovely work, drew me to the author’s previous book, Paris Letters, One Woman’s Journey from the Fast Lane to a Slow Stroll in Paris. This memoir, a prelude to A Year in Paris, is a joy. Janice begins her story in Los Angeles, where she is a well-paid upper-level advertising copy writer and editor. Unhappy with the clutter and stress of her life, Janice wonders how much money she would need to save to take off for a year of travel. Speculating that $100 a day might be enough if she were frugal (this was in 2010), MacLeod develops a plan for saving, spending less, and simplifying her life. “My first step to Paris started in my underwear drawer,” she writes. A year later her adventure begins with six-weeks in an apartment on rue Mouffetard in Paris.
MacLeod’s writing is relaxed, honest, and lightly humorous. To save for you the delight of discovery, I can only disclose that the neighborhood butcher is tall, good-looking, and responsive to Janice’s smiles. Besides her intimate adventures and city rambles, MacLeod starts an Etsy business to sell subscriptions for copies of hand-painted “Letters from Paris.” The memoir ends delightfully with a list of 100 suggestions on how to “save or not spend $100 a day.”
If you are partial to love stories, travel stories, and art, Paris Letters and A Year in Paris, two completely different renderings of the same story, will take you into a world far from the restrictions of sheltering at home. Both books rate five stars from me.
To see Janice MacLeod’s lovely hand-painted letters and other offerings on Etsy go to:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/JaniceMacLeodStudio
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