About the Book
A financially strapped university student in Paris starts an affair with a sophisticated married woman over the course of one tumultuous year...
...Marc and Emma begin a deep and intense affair, spending long hours getting to know each other in and out of bed. They gallivant through parks, restaurants, and the attractions of Paris, falling deeply in love. ...As they luxuriate in their mutual feelings, they are ... troubled by their own worries about protecting the happiness of the other. Told in the third person, the narrative is broken into four sections based on the temporal seasons and interspersed with short poems and ... artwork. There is a heavy emphasis on monologues and dialogue, both internal and external, throughout Cullen's sentimental story... The plot does move more quickly as the novel approaches its conclusion, and if readers can hang on, the tale becomes increasingly engrossing... The story features lovely descriptions of French foods, locations, and landmarks. There are also several beautifully rendered moments of human connection and self-sacrifice.
A sweet but slow-moving tale of a love affair in Paris... -Kirkus Reviews
Paris Affaire is a love story with an unforeseeable ending that will knock you out of your chaussettes.... about a young Parisian poet and his Angel in the City of Lights. They are both Parisian, but from opposite sides of the Métro tracks, so to speak.
Marc, 23, is a handsome, sensitive young poet and rebel struggling to survive (taxi driver, bar tender, lawn mower, bookstore clerk) while writing vignettes and cascades of lyric verse.
Emma, 30, is a wealthy, beautiful, classy faculty wife and former fashion model. Her husband has abandoned her emotionally, is a paleontologist on a long term assignment in Australia, is playing around with not only ancient bones but also fresh young ones in the clubs and on the beaches of Sydney or Melbourne. Lately, he has called from thousands of miles away to tell her he has found another girl, and is making long-distance noises about divorcing Emma.
Emma, who looks ten years younger, an ageless beauty, has been alone too long. She has been faithful, living in her family's expensive and rambling, empty apartments in the City. When Marc happens into her life, they both click instantly. They run to each other's arms with passion, joy, and hunger.
Together, Marc and Emma live in a bubble without time, where the clocks have no numbers but the seconds and minutes are sweeping toward some inevitable encounter with fate. In the meantime, they pursue love with all the joy and faith in their youthful hearts. But there is always a shadow of trepidation that their happiness in Paris may not last.
He is her artist and she is his angel. Together, they make music along the same boulevards and streets that still bear haunting strains of Ravel or Debussy and verses of Verlaine or Apollinaire. Countless great artists have come here for centuries to walk in the covered passages and drink from fountains of inspiration. Can Marc and Emma overcome the differences that fate has thrown between them? Will their love last forever or just the one year told in this story?
This is a young people's story - quirky, happy, poetic, literary, sad, reckless, joyful. It's a roller coaster ride of emotions leading to an ending you will not see coming in a million years. Nothing lasts forever - not in Paris, not in this life. As the French say: C'est la vie. That's life. Enjoy every minute, every hour to the fullest, while other trains are on their way to this station, other eyes and faces linger thoughtfully in rainy windows, looking wistfully forward to... the surprise of your life. And it was there all along. If we could just read the telegrams along the way. But we can't, and that's part of our destiny, and why life is so filled with surprises. Édith Piaf sang, "je ne regrette rien....I regret nothing..."
