Tuesday Intros -- Finding Fontainebleau

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.

This week, I'm reading Finding Fontainebleau by Thad Carhart. It's a memoir about an American boy growing up in Paris in the 1950s.

Here's the intro:

All these years later I can recall with keen precision the moment when the bottom dropped out, because that is exactly what it felt like: one moment we were flying, shaking a bit from turbulence, the next we were falling, in a calm, eerie quiet broken only by the sound of the four engines laboring uselessly. Then the air caught us again and it was bad: the plane pitched violently up and down, from side to side, every way imaginable. The passengers found their voice then, after the expectant dread of the free fall. This was active, maniacal horror, and people screamed. It was the first time I saw an adult -- many of them, in fact -- expressing fear without reserve. The woman across from us started to cry and yell, and there was nothing to be done but listen and watch with a kind of terrified fascination. 

This cliff-hanger opening leads to some calmer musings about life in post-war France and the experiences Carhart's family had adjusting to a move from suburban Virginia to Paris.

I look forward to seeing what everyone else is reading.

I'm also connecting with Paris in July.

France Book Tours -- The Church of Tango

I'm just going to say straight up that I had to check a couple of times to see that The Church of Tango by Cherie Magnus was actually a memoir rather than fiction. Some of the things that happened seemed so unbelievable -- but you know what they say about truth being stranger...

The memoir begins with the death of Cherie's husband. Her tenacity and her adventurous spirit afterward are amazing. 

Of course, since the book is on France Book Tours, I figured part of it had to take place in France, and I was right. 

She visits Paris right away, renting a room from an older woman.

Madame indicated that I shouldn't make myself at home in the rest of the apartment. I noticed the telephone in the dining room had a padlock on it, not that I had anyone to call. The stale cookies had left a dusty taste in my mouth, and so I went across the street to sit over a creme on the sidewalk of the Cafe de l'Esperance, now open and filling up with after-Mass and instead-of-Mass habitues. My ears ached with listening to them all speaking French as I stirred my coffee and looked around with amazement. here I was, at age forty-eight, suddenly on my own in Paris, transported as if by magic. There was no place on earth I would rather be, nothing else I would rather be doing. It had been three years since I had had a moment like this. Los Angeles was far away, so was the despair and depression I had lived with for so long. 

Through all of her difficulties -- health, emotional, and financial -- Cherie had tango to pull her through. Her fascination with tango took her around the world and into the arms of men equally passionate about tango, and a few of them passionate about her, as well. 

I'm not going to pretend that I understood Cherie's passion for tango. I've attempted to learn it a few times without much success, but I do understand when people find something that they love to do and want to do it constantly. Cherie's love for tango was the passion that took her on her adventures, and I truly enjoyed the journey along with her in her well-written memoir. 

I'm not sure if the author meant to teach the lessons that I learned, but I'll go ahead and share them with you. 

Cherie's financial troubles were closely connected to the sale of her beautiful home in California. It was a home that she felt she couldn't afford after her husband died, but she really had no stability afterward as she moved from France, to an apartment in California, to an apartment in Mexico, to Argentina.

Also, being a naive Midwesterner, I couldn't believe the way people treated her. When her husband died, he had been in a business deal with several other men. Those men realized the business deal was going south, so they transferred all of their assets into their wives' name. Cherie was the only one left holding the bag because her husband died. I can't believe real people would do that, would treat a widow that way, but they did.

Cherie also got ripped off by her realtor, who couldn't advertise her house, so he kept lowering the price and eventually bought it himself when he felt the price was low enough. Again, I was shocked.

The final financial blow came from the couple with whom she and her husband owned an apartment in France. Apparently, in France, people have mortgage insurance so that if one partner dies, the mortgage is paid off. Here was a chance for Cherie to hold onto some property and some security. But the couple who shared the house, brought a lawyer to their meeting and said instead of Cherie's half being paid off, all of their payments were lowered. They said Cherie was still responsible for part of the mortgage. She ended up selling the apartment to them at an unfair price too.

You'd think that after all of that, plus fighting breast cancer, Cherie would be ready to give up, but she wasn't. She held onto her curiosity for life, and she kept dancing. Her life should be an inspiration for all of us.
Go to the bottom of this post to enter for a chance to win the ebook. It's open internationally. 

Synopsis  

More than a metaphor and much more than a dance, the Tango takes Cherie from being a widow with suicidal tendencies to traveling the world in search of herself, finding love, sorrow and serenity. Her quest takes her to France where she falls in love with aristocratic Olivier, and to Argentina where she falls in love with the tango. Along the way she discovers and deals with her own two separate breast cancers and the loss of all that she’d previously valued. Relationships in the desperate singles world is a whole new dance to learn, before being blessed at the Church of Tango.
The Church of Tango captivates readers struggling with tragic loss, illness, and death, as well as those who are passionate about travel and adventure, who long for love, or who delight in dance of all kinds.
Gold Medal winner 2013 of the Wishing Shelf Book Award

Entry-Form

First Paragraph -- The Church of Tango

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.

I am reading The Church of Tango by Cherie Magnus for France Book Tours. I'll post a review of this memoir in October. Here's the intro:

It was February, 1992, when I stood in my raincoat with my two suitcases in front of a locked courtyard gate in the 9th arrondissement. The airport taxi vanished, leaving me alone on the deserted street. The digicode I had brought from Los Angeles didn't unlock the big double doors of the eighteenth-century apartment building. What am I doing here? I wondered in a moment of panic. Am I completely crazy after a year of widowhood.

 What do you think?

First Paragraph, Tuesday Teaser -- Heads Above Water

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
Next week I get to review my favorite kind of French book -- a memoir about someone moving to France. It's called Heads Above Water and is by Stephanie Dagg.

Here's the intro:

We arrived in Ireland in 1992, when times were good, cars were held together by string, and food prices were almost non-existent. Having only ever lived in cramped housing estates in England with tiny gardens and too many neighbours, we couldn't believe our luck at finding a bungalow in the countryside to rent. We called it Harry's House, after our amiable landlord. He didn't put the rent up in over three years, and on the rare occasions we had a building-related problem, he was at the front door to sort it out within minutes. Harry's House had a large back garden and a fantastic view over nearby fields and distant Cork city. It was in a row of five other bungalows all  housing lovely families. 

Also this week  is Teaser Tuesdays. Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Open to a random page of your current read  and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser.
Here's my teaser from 23%:

Fairies first. According to this version, fairies used to bathe in hot springs near these rocks. The Fairy Queen was quite happy with this, so long as the fairies got home before dark. But of course, one day they didn't and the Queen got cross.

I'm looking forward to this one.

Books on France -- French Illusions

This year, I signed up to read 12 books set in France at the Books on France challenge held by Emma at Words and Peace. The first book I've finished for this challenge is French Illusions, which is a memoir, by Linda Kovic-Skow.
This was an enjoyable book that takes the reader to 1979 France and let's us see a French family through her eyes.
Kovic-Skow ended up going to France as an au pair because she wanted to learn French so she could become a flight attendant. But in order to get the job as an au pair, she had to pretend to speak French. It sounds like a vicious circle. So 22-year-old Kovic-Skow faked her French test and was hired by a well-off French family. That did not get her au pair experience off to a great start. The French family considered sending her home but in the end let her stay. She grew close with two of the children she cared for but did not get along with the mother of the family.
She also got to attend some classes in Tours and meet other young people around the world.
The story definitely engaged me as I hurried to find out how her au pair experience turned out.
Here's an excerpt from her dinner with the family's in-laws:
Soon Maurice brought in the next course, two large salads, one with crunchy lettuce and duck giblets and another featuring lettuce with truffles and walnut oil. An extravagant cheese board and French bread followed.
Throughout most of the meal, I felt ignored until Monsieur Dubois turned to me and asked a surprising question. "What do you think of Monsieur Carter? Many of us in France are amazed you elected him president."
"I really don't follow politics. I'm sorry. I wish I had more to say." My cheeks warmed, and I felt embarrassed  by my response. At that time in my young life, I knew very little about affairs of state.
Monsieur Dubois shrugged and turned to his father-in-law, muttering a few words before they exploded in laughter.
I remember those feelings of embarrassment and inadequacy as I sat through many dinners with a French family when I was an au pair.
In spite of some of the author's difficulties, I'll admit to being jealous of some of Kovic-Skow's opportunities. I didn't get any days off when I was an au pair. But she was required to do things I hadn't dreamed of, like make homemade yogurt.
At the end of the book, I would have liked some more details about how her time in France turned out. But maybe that will be another book.
The book is available on Kindle at Amazon for only 99 cents.