Many writers talk about the idea of place as character in fiction or nonfiction, where the setting of a story may reveal the tone or even deeper insight into a main character. In Mary Fleming’s guest post, she writes on place and the bigger role it plays in her new novel, The Art of Regret (just released from She Writes Press). You can read an excerpt below, and, courtesy of She Writes Press and Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity, there’s a book giveaway! Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, October 29th for a chance to win a copy of The Art of Regret. Now, welcome Mary Fleming!
It’s no accident that Paris takes up so much space in the opening paragraph of The Art of Regret. The book actually has two protagonists. There’s the narrator Trevor, who has undergone more than his fair share of personal tragedy but who has yet to come to terms with those crippling events. The novel recounts his long road to redemption.
The other main character is Paris. She is as present in Trevor’s life as his family and friends and the novel is also the story of his relationship to the city. It traces the way boyhood feelings of resentment and alienation grow into a more positive force so that by adulthood she provides solace and a reminder that life goes on, no matter his own suffering.
The city’s complications contribute to this sense of Paris as a character, as more than a mere backdrop to everyday life. Like a friend she is multi-faceted and can continue to surprise you, even after many years. My breath still catches when I see the morning light on the Seine and its bridges or look down a yet undiscovered little street. Trevor too, later in the novel, is taken aback when he visits a friend who lives in a house surrounded by the remains of a vineyard, all hidden from street view by a perfectly ordinary building in Montmartre.
As someone who has also lived in Paris for many years, I can testify that Trevor is not the only one to feel that symbiotic relationship. Whether it’s her long history or her great beauty, there is something close to human about the city. She is in fact one of the reasons I wrote the book, as an ode to this great lady.
The monuments become like friends, which goes some way to explaining why Parisiens were so upset by the burning of Notre Dame earlier this year. For Trevor the iconic relationship is to the Sacré Coeur that sits atop the hill of Montmartre and pops up on the horizon from many points in the city. Since he first caught sight of the church as a child, he associated the towers with his family before his father and sister died. The one big and the three small ones that were visible represented his mother and the three children, the basilica his father. As a young man he saw it from a room he rented. Now he sees it every day when he walks out of his bicycle shop Mélo-Vélo.
Like a friend Paris helps in times of trouble. While recovering from an accident and a betrayal as a young man, Trevor finds that the city coaxes him out of his pain and misery. Ditto in the second half of the novel, when walking becomes an integral part of his daily routine. The city helps him see beyond his own troubles, to feel part of a bigger story. It’s done the same for me on many occasions.
All of which doesn’t mean the city is static. She continues to evolve. Fortunes change; quartiers rise and fall. The rue des Martyrs, for example, may have been deemed unremarkable by Trevor in 1995 but it’s since been gentrified, has moved upscale.
Change or no change, Paris remains a steady friend to the end.
Excerpt: The Art of Regret, Part I, Chapter One
For many years, in what might have been the prime of my life, I lived and worked on the rue des Martyrs. This narrow market street, which begins its climb at the northern edge of the banking and insurance district and ends in the skein of streets that wraps around the Sacré Coeur at the heart of Montmartre, is not on the tourist circuit and has no pretensions to Parisian grandeur. Behind and above its modest shop fronts are forgettable lives. Lives like my own, which I had reduced to a box, a one-room apartment on top of a one-room shop. Though the two were once a unit, at some point and for some reason—to make more space, to rent the shop and studio separately—the connecting stairs had been disconnected and my room could only be reached by an enclosed stairway in the courtyard. It’s not unusual in a city with a long history. Buildings change their function and configuration, and one structure is squeezed in front of, behind, or beside another. It’s just such quirks that have made Paris Paris, a city of endless layers and perspectives, a city of story upon story.
Though my story began in New York, the firstborn son of two Americans, it was moved across the Atlantic with a mother and a brother, minus a father and a sister, when I was eight. There on European soil the story reluctantly remained, until near the end of a resentful adolescence. Unfortunately, the long-awaited return to the United States of America, via a small college, proved a disaster, and back the story came to Paris, where it drifted into young and not so young adulthood. By the time it had settled on the rue des Martyrs, I had hoped that that was where it would end, the unremarkable tale of a not-so-proud bicycle shop owner.
One October morning in 1995, I pulled up the orange security grille to Mélo-Vélo. No matter how carefully I coaxed it, the clang of juddering metal scraped my nerve ends. It seemed such an offensive start to every day, I was thinking, as I walked to the back of the shop and assessed my morning’s work, a bicycle that had spent the last twenty years in a basement. The airless tires were cracked, the handlebars rusty. Cobwebs draped every spoke, and the leather saddle was speckled with mold. The wheels squeaked and wobbled. A complete overhaul was in order, but for Camilla Barchester, the name I had noted on the repair slip, it might prove to be worth the trouble. I turned the bicycle belly up on the repair stand.
The Tibetan chimes jangled while I was contemplating which bit of the wreck to attack first. It was Madame Picquot, the concierge, with the morning post. Though I had long ago made it clear to her that I was not receptive to morning chatter, that I had no interest in the secrets and rumors, the scandals and grievances that scurried through the building and up and down the street, that I wished she’d just drop my post at the bottom of the stairs to the studio, she passed by the shop every morning to deliver my letters in person.
“Voilà, Monsieur Mic-fa,” she croaked. “Registered letter. I saved you a trip to the post office and signed for it. Ca va?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Normally, since I received little of interest, registered or otherwise, I would have been in no hurry to look at my correspondence, but for some reason—perhaps a fundamental lack of interest in the task at hand—I went straight to the counter and looked at my misspelled name: “Monsieur Trévor MACFARQUAHAR.” If my name is systematically shortened when spoken in French, it is lengthened when written, unfailingly adorned by superfluous vowels and unnecessary accents, and forever a reminder of my general square-pegged existence in a round world.
I sighed, ripped open the envelope, unfolded the slim sheet of white paper, and in the few short paragraphs saw my life crumbling before me.
Mary Fleming, originally from Chicago, moved to Paris in 1981, where she worked as a freelance journalist and consultant. Before turning full-time to writing fiction, she was the French representative for the American foundation The German Marshall Fund. A long-time board member of the French Fulbright Commission, Mary continues to serve on the board of Bibliothèques sans Frontières. Having raised five children, she and her husband now split their time between Paris and Berlin. THE ART OF REGRET is her second novel. Find her online at https://www.maryfleming.co/.
Don’t forget: Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, October 29th,
for a chance to win a copy of The Art of Regret!
