I was really thrilled by Marie Michaud’s review of Rouge Paris for Page des Librairies. She said Rouge Paris was “un roman émouvant sur l’amour, l’art et la vie, véritable plongée dans la bohème parisienne du XIXe siècle.” Click here to read the entire review. Michaud also spoke about Rouge Paris on France Bleu radio […]
I’ve written before about the give-and-take between novelists and characters. I not only try to enter into the lives of my characters, but I also give them pieces of myself. Today I want to talk about this old watercolor painting I gave to Victorine: I painted it the summer I was sixteen. Not for any […]
“Ce jour-lá j’ai dix-sept ans et je porte des bottines de putain.”
Thursday, October 30, 2014 is the publication date for Rouge Paris, the French translation of Paris Red. Christian Bourgois is the publisher. Cécile Deniard translated. I received copies the other day and I went through the same thing I always do. I opened the package and slipped out the books—and then I couldn’t think. I […]
My main character in Paris Red is poor. When Victorine Meurent meets Manet, she’s working as a brunisseuse, or a silver burnisher, and she has very little money to live on. She eats as cheaply as she can, buying her meals on the streets, and many days she gets by on bread and soup—soupe aux […]
One of the things that’s on my mind right now is how we aren’t ever supposed to need things. When we do, we are often shamed for it—or worse. (Certainly in America in 2014, if you need something like health care that doesn’t come from an employer, large forces are at work to to disenfranchise […]
I look down and fiddle with the metal clip and the band. I keep my head lowered and when I get tired of pushing at my stocking, I let my fingers relax and just keep them there, the tips tucked under the band above my knee. It is not like the nude poses for Moulin. […]
A snapshot from my old room in Paris, on Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui. Every morning when I got up, I looked out from the terrace to see the Suze sign. I just loved seeing it. That’s what gave me the idea for the details of this scene from Paris Red, where Victorine looks out the window of her new room: “There’s […]
Paris Red: A Novel by Maureen Gibbon 