THE PARIS NOVEL, by Ruth Reichl
Stella St. Vincent’s estranged mother dies and leaves her with an unusual bequest: She is to take her modest inheritance and go to Paris.
It’s not an obvious recipe for success, but it does make for an enticing narrative prompt. The heroine of Ruth Reichl’s “The Paris Novel” is not one for impulsive jaunts; her existence is rigidly ordered, a response to the tumult of a traumatic childhood — including episodes of sexual abuse that Reichl narrates in unexpected detail early in the novel. Still, Stella remains a dutiful daughter. Her boss at a small press encourages her to take the trip. She goes.
Stella arrives in 1980s France friendless and with almost no experience of gratification beyond that of a well-placed comma. No romance, no indulgence; she subsists on coffee, toast and boiled eggs in New York and cheap protein in Paris. “Pleasure,” Reichl writes, “was not part of her program.”
After a few weeks of old habits and dismal meals, Stella stumbles into a vintage store where she slips into a Dior dress. Like Cinderella, she cuts a deal: The imperious shopkeeper gets to dictate where Stella should go and what she should eat when she gets there. In exchange, Stella can be someone else for a night and return the dress at no cost the next morning.
Ever the rule-follower, she heads to the iconic Les Deux Magots as instructed, where an old art collector zeros in on her — and the dress. From there, the plot unfurls like a marathon tasting menu.
A former restaurant critic and magazine editor whose debut memoir, “Tender at the Bone,” remains one of the most piquant and delectable of the genre, Reichl peoples her new novel with giants of the Parisian food scene, including Richard Olney and Alain Passard. Their appearances provide a welcome hit of spice, balancing out a sequence of events so rich that I sometimes wondered whether I wanted to gobble the rest of the book down or push it aside, stuffed.
There are wish fulfillment fantasies, and then there’s “The Paris Novel,” in which a woman with no plans and no prospects escapes to Paris and finds not just a mentor turned patron, but a scatterbrained Virgil (in the form of a renowned bookseller, George Whitman), a father figure or two and a convenient romantic partner. Stella embarks on an art caper and develops an appetite for the earthiest delicacies. And magical couturiers aside, it’s the author who waves a magic wand: Despite Stella’s avowed abstemiousness, it turns out she has a phenomenal palate and considerable charm. What greater gifts could a Reichl heroine desire?
So Stella devours all in her path: foie gras, poems, lectures, ortolan, the intricacies of French bureaucracy, cheese and several mysteries of provenance. Antagonists are vanquished. The narrative is sweet, but reminded me less of Ladurée’s towers of pastel macarons than of New York’s old Krispy Kreme locations, where a cutout window let customers watch the doughnuts be fried and dunked. I read Reichl’s latest with a mental picture of her behind the glass, shellacking on the sugar glaze.
Still, Reichl has retained an enthusiastic and undeniable knack for describing food and its attendant thrills. Implausible twists and turns go down easier because Reichl keeps the wine — and mouthwatering prose — flowing.
You could quibble with the likelihood of Stella’s adventure or even wonder what kind of visa she used to enter France, but who can care about odds or immigration status when total transformation is on the menu? Treats don’t need logic, and “The Paris Novel” doesn’t, either. When a waiter drops an extra dessert on the table, better not send it back to the kitchen.
THE PARIS NOVEL | By Ruth Reichl | Random House | 278 pp. | $29
