I read a book by Michelle Gable entitled The Bookseller’s Secret. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to try A Paris Apartment by the same author. It is one of the author’s earlier works. Like my first Gable book, this is based on fact but is a novel. The apartment existed. Marthe de Florian existed. Her profession was real. Many of the historical residents of the book (the late 19th and early 20th Century characters) were real people.
Marthe de Florian was raised in a convent but at age 16 or so, she “escapes” to Paris with very little funds or clothes. She is pretty and manages to snare a job at the world famous Folies Bergère (it still exists) as a barmaid. That job provides her with the cash necessary to find a place to live. The job also allows her to befriend “gentlemen” who actually are her main source of income and property.
Her first benefactor is Pierre, a French businessman with interests in South America. He funds Marthe’s move into the 1500 square foot apartment that is the title of the book. When Pierre stops funding the apartment, Marthe goes through a succession of lovers including Giovanni Boldini, a famous portrait painter and Robert “Le Comte” de Montesquiou, a writer and philosopher of some repute. Both are real people. Through their financial aid (and others), Marthe acquires a great many treasures including a Boldini portrait. In 2010, her last heiress decides that she wants to sell the contents of the apartment. Nobody had been there since 1940 when the heiress’s mother packed up and left Paris when the Germans arrived at the beginning of WWII.<
Enter April Vogt, a furniture expert working for Sotheby’s (a world famous, real auction company) based in their New York City office. She is asked to go to Paris to inventory the apartment and prepare the contents for an auction. It is early summer and the auction is to be in early fall. Her marriage to financier Troy Vogt has been on shaky grounds ever since he admitted to having a one-stand with an associate.
Once April visits the apartment, she discovers diaries written by Marthe a century earlier. April wants to use those diaries as the basis for the provenance of the items. She becomes enthralled with Marthe’s life (as did I). Luc Thebault is the handsome, French lawyer handling the estate. Madame Agnes Vannier is the heiress who is living, barely, in Sarlat-le-Caneda, in the Dordogne Valley region of southwest France. One of April’s major goals is to meet Madame Vannier who is very old and seriously ill.
The story bounces from 2010 to the 1890s and early 20th century via alternating chapters. Through the diaries, the reader lives the life of the young Marthe as she makes her way through life’s peaks and valleys. We get to meet her arch nemesis, Jeanne Hugo, granddaughter of Victor Hugo the famous French author. Jeanne and Marthe share a dark secret that is revealed near the end of the story. I did not see that coming at all.
If you have ever been to, or wanted to go to, Paris, this is must reading. If you are a history buff, this is must reading. If you just like a great story, well told, this is for you. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
GO! BUY! READ!
–Jim Harris, retired book sales rep
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[Please note: There are several books with similar Parisian pied-à-terre titles out! There is The Paris Apartment, a twisty contemporary thriller from Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment by Kelly Bowen, set in 2017 and 1942, as well as the book Jim writes about, A Paris Apartment, published in 2015.]