The Only Street in Paris

August 24, 2015
Sciolino (La Seduction), an American-born writer who now lives in Paris, takes readers for a cultural and historical stroll along her adopted city’s venerable rue des Martyrs in this warmhearted, well-researched gem. The street, located in the vibrant ninth arrondissement, is largely untouched by progress, and the greengrocer, cheese shop, butcher, baker and other old-time merchants feel quaint; there is a cart-pushing knife sharpener and a mender of antique barometers. Famed transvestite performance nightspot Cabaret Michou, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church, and the Grand Synagogue of Paris are long-lived neighborhood landmarks. Historically, the neighborhood was host to Thomas Jefferson, Emile Zola, and bohemian artists, musicians, writers, and critics; Sciolino occasionally feels their ghostly reappearance. “For me, it is the last real street in Paris, a half-mile celebration of the city in all its diversity,” she writes, adding, “This street represents what is left of the intimate, human side of Paris.” Sciolino, a seasoned journalist and former Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, also addresses contemporary culture such as France’s rising anti-Semitism, recounting the terrorist attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in January 2015, after which the street’s merchants placed “Je suis Charlie” signs in their windows. Readers will appreciate her mixture of the tenacity of journalism and a warm memoir-like quality. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency.