Paris Lost and Found: A Memoir of Love

Whether you’ve been to the City of Lights or not, you most likely hold on to those iconic images from film and television: the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe. As Scott Carpenter writes, “visitors know exactly what they’re coming for—romance, fashion, grandeur.” But he has lived part time in Paris for decades and in these humorous, heartfelt essays, he presents a different view of the city. Tourists don’t experience rats in the basement, or the mysterious case of someone pooping where they shouldn’t, much less the hilarious bureaucratic snafus of French banking. As someone who travels between the Midwest and France, he often compares life in the U.S. (our fascination with guns, for instance) with Gallic ways, even as Paris becomes more like America, for good and for ill. His pieces encompass grief, given that they were written during his wife’s descent into Alzheimer’s, and during the pandemic lockdown. “Both Anne and I were being robbed. Someone had come through our life and cleaned us out.” For a time, he loses Paris and the life he has known with Anne. Can he regain love? An enjoyable, engaging read for travelers—armchair and airline alike.