After reading her fascinating blog and interviewing her at the American Library, I wanted to learn more about Denyse Beaulieu, Parisian author of The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent (Harper Collins UK). She inspired perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour to create a new scent based on her memories of a summer night in Seville. Denyse has learned the principles of perfume composition with the help of some of the profession’s most prestigious noses. Her expertise has been acknowledged by the London College of Fashion where she has taught an intensive “Understanding Fragrance” course. She is a member of the Société Française des Parfumeurs and a juror at the Fragrance Foundation France.

What first brought you to Paris?

I came to do my doctorate in French literature, a memoir on feminine education in the works of the Marquis de Sade. But by the time I’d published a short essay on the theme for the literary review L’Infini, I figured that what could be said in ten pages didn’t have to be stretched out into 500. There were a lot more exciting things to do in Paris, and all around Europe – so many classic films to catch up on in art-house theaters, so many galleries and parties and cities to explore… I never did finish my dissertation!

Can you tell us about your book The Perfume Lover?

The book is made up of two narrative threads: the making of a perfume and the making of a perfume lover. The former was inspired by the story of a night during the Holy Week in Seville, which I told the renowned perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour: the book chronicles the development of the fragrance, Séville à l’aube, which will be launched by L’Artisan Parfumeur in July 2012. This creative journey summoned memories, which led me to explore how I could interpret a life through scent – mine, since that was the material at hand. Reminiscing about my own milestone fragrances led me to delve into the history of perfumery – for instance, when I write about the first masculine fragrance I wore, I also explain why in the West, certain notes are considered feminine and others masculine. Developing Séville à l’aube made me seek out the people who were renewing the art of perfumery, so that I could better understand how to communicate what I wanted to Bertrand Duchaufour. The book is really a way of approaching fragrance through as many facets as possible: stories, history, science, eroticism, religion…

What’s next?

I’ve pretty much finished the French version of the book, which will come out in early 2013 at the Presses de la Cité. I’m working on the development of three new fragrances – teaming up with a perfumer is a wonderful antidote to the solitude of writing. Mostly, I’m trying to figure out what a writer can bring to the world of fragrance: not only inspiration, but also thought, aesthetics, a more fruitful way of introducing people to this invisible realm – exploring the olfactory adds another dimension to human experience. It is also, once you begin to master the language, a formidable writing generator, so that the inspiration goes both ways.

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So here we are, two weeks away from the first round of the French presidential elections. My official voting card showed up last week, so I am all set to vote for my first French president. I have to admit, I’m not as prepared as I could/should be. C & I have been so tired at the end of the day lately that we usually just end up watching fluff American TV on the slingbox….so I am way more up on the American presidential runoff than I am the French one.

I have made an effort though, but it just hasn’t gotten me anywhere. Looking at the various candidates websites, how do you weed through the muck? There’s so much information there and half of it is just what they think people want to hear, so how do you know what theyreally believe in and what they really plan on doing if elected?  I know I’m not the only newbie French citizen out there, so I am happy to say I now have an answer for us.

I was reading Ouest-France the other day during a work trip and came across a small article talking about an online poll they have. You answer 30 questions on various topics and at the end, it tells you which candidate corresponds the best to your beliefs. As an added bonus, you have the option of taking it in French or English, so even those of you who can’t vote can at least hypothetically find out who you would vote for.

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Here on The Paris Blog, we have featured articles on Janet Skeslien Charles, an expat writer whose debut novel Moonlight in Odessa has garnered great acclaim since its 2010 publication. Now we are honored to feature Janet’s interviews with fellow writers cross-posted here from her own blog. The latest tete-a-tete is with Anne Korkeakivi, author of the new novel An Unexpected Guest.

Anne Korkeakivi and I are both alumni of the Geneva Writers’ Conference and I am thrilled to be interviewing her about her novel, An Unexpected Guest, which will be published by Little, Brown US on April 17. It has been chosen as an April pick-of-the-week by WH Smith Booksellers here in Paris, where she’ll be reading and signing on May 31st. Also in May, the novel will be a featured alternate selection by Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, and Quality Paperback Book Club. So far, rights have been sold in Italy, Russia, Serbia, and Australia. Congratulations, Anne!

Can you tell us what your book is about?
An Unexpected Guest tells the story of an American woman, married to a high-ranking British diplomat in Paris, who is asked at the last minute to put on a dinner that could make all the difference to her husband’s career. Alas, a secret from her past chooses this same twenty-four hours to raise its hoary head. How we live with our past, how we equilibrate our private versus our public lives, global life after 9/11, modern diplomacy, perceptions of terrorism and terrorists, marriage, parenting and especially parenting in multi-national or expat families, Rodin, and even what to serve at a spring dinner party in Paris are all woven into the narrative. Clare Moorhouse, the main character, is a very multi-tasking woman!

What were some of the challenges and rewards working on it?
I am happy to say that the one mostly led to the other, starting with all the research that went into the book – from plying a retired veteran diplomat with questions about protocol to reading copious studies, histories, and interviews related to the Troubles – and how to weave that information into the story in literary fashion. Simply determining how to indicate a Northern Irish brogue without driving readers crazy took hours of study! But I came away at every step with a richer world, both as a writer and just as a person.

What is the best advice you have ever received?
Writing advice? Stop to pick the fruit.

What advice would you give to other writers?
Work hard, and then work harder.

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Now that the weather is right for spending quality time in Paris parks, there are lots of new books to accompany your baguette snack for an afternoon’s respite. Jessica Howard, from Bookmans Entertainment Exchange, posted this review of Ina Caro’s Paris to the Past: Traveling Through French History by Train on the site Shelf Awareness.

Ina Caro and her husband, biographer Robert Caro, have lived and traveled in France several months each year for the past 20 years. Caro’s moment of inspiration for this book is twofold: first, she decides to visit monuments chronologically, rather than geographically, and she decides to write only about places that can be day trips from Paris by train. By visiting sites chronologically, she is able to observe the historical development of architectural style. By limiting herself to day trips, she is able to choose one place that particularly represents each era.

Paris to the Past is divided into five sections (“The Middle Ages: Cathedrals and Fortresses”; “The Age of Louis XIV: Seventeenth-Century France,” etc.). Within those, chapters focus on a particular place, like Blois or Versailles. Some people are mentioned multiple times across different chapters, especially Louis XIV, because he and his mistresses apparently went everywhere. This is slightly repetitive when reading the book straight through, but helpful when using it chapter by chapter as a travel guide and reference.

Caro has obviously done much research. From document-forging Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis to the transvestite Henry III to fiery Napoléon Bonaparte, Caro provides fascinating insights into the lives and the motivations for creating these glorious monuments. She also gives detailed instructions on which trains to take, while offering pithy opinions on restaurants and tourist attractions. Whether you’re reading it as a history book or as a travel guide, you’re bound to like Paris to the Past.

It’s easy to forget that not everyone who moves to France goes to the capital. That’s why the new book Living Abroad in France is so welcome. It covers the whole of the Hexagon. So who better than the editor of the Anglophone site Grenoble Life, James Dalrymple, to review this new guide?

For those contemplating a move to Grenoble from abroad in the near future, it is my great pleasure to recommend the Moon Living Abroad guide to France, written by Aurelia d’Andrea. With advice on visa applications, finance, employment, education, accommodation and healthcare in L’Hexagone, as well as more local knowledge on eating out, public transport and resources for expats, the book provides a refreshing alternative to travel guides for those anticipating longer stays in the country. People preparing a move to France for professional reasons, particularly those intending to bring their family with them for example, will find Moon Living Abroad in France an invaluable initial source of information.

Any such guide book is necessarily general in part as it cannot provide solutions for every imaginable need for people planning a move abroad. This one concentrates on six regional centres of economic activity in which expatriated English speakers are most likely to find themselves, of which Grenoble and Lyon comprise a chapter together. Yet it covers the essential in a helpful and practical way, with handy guides to language and etiquette in addition to crucial details for parents and pet-owners. Aurelia d’Andrea’s France is not overly romanticized, but neither is it impersonal, she lists her own idiosyncratic French loves while enlisting the local knowledge of expats on the ground.

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I loved the book from the exhibition Dynamic Beauty: Sculpture of Art Nouveau Paris. But for a review I thought I would lean on a more learned source: Natalie Fasano from the site The Curated Object. Her article from The Curated Object is cross-posted below.

Dynamic Beauty: Sculpture of Art Nouveau Paris, produced by the Macklowe Gallery, contains the largest catalogue of Art Nouveau design since the celebrated Paris Exposition of 1900. An art form that remains highly desirable among collectors, Art Nouveau emerged in reaction to the Neo Classical and Romantic aesthetics to effectively pave the way for Modernist art and design. This volume showcases the pieces that remain—to the contemporary eye—timeless in their depiction of the primordial beauty of the feminine. Dynamic Beauty is replete with images of Art Nouveau sculpture and design, showcasing the period’s dynamic use of new materials to execute highly unique, and reproducible, works of art.

Leafing through the extensive catalogue, one notices the Nouveau artists’ preferred subject—“woman.” In modern society, many would argue that she remains a marginalized object of masculine perusal and, in some cases, subjugation. Although representative of timeless beauty and the mystery of life, female subjects in Art Nouveau design largely remain a subject for the flaneur’s (impassioned [male] spectator) fingers to mould. In this new age materials like bronze and porcelain would penetrate this image in poetry and electrify in Parisian monument. Where the Symbolist school relied heavily on the ancient and recognizable forms and functions of art to define beauty, Art Nouveau went much further. The mechanical age and new methods for mass productions radically change the role of art in society. The ritual function of the sculpture as an icon, an inaccessible object both adorning and fixed to local places of worship or religious gathering, had held fast in pre-modern societies. Now, such objects could be produced for millions of admirers, thousands of future grandmothers wishing to decorate their pristine shelves with something beautiful. The object slowly moved from the altar to the drawing room and from the realm of the penitent to that of the discerning consumer. Dynamic Beauty includes three supplementary essays to its catalogue, and explores the social environment that gave rise to Art Nouveau sculpture and design, with the Paris exhibition its cultural touchstone.

Although none of the essays delve too deeply into the existential reasons underlying the rapid rise of the new form, they do provide readers with the basic thematic elements that tie pieces of the period to one another. Perhaps the most indicative sculpture of the period, perfectly defining the “newness” of the age and the hopes it represented is an untitled piece by Hans Stoltenberg-Lerche, which catalogue’s editorial team aptly names Primordial. The piece, in patinated bronze with carnelian adornment exists solely for itself, alluringly malformed and androgynous. It is Agathon Leonard’s dansers flayed to the bone, bridged by Sarah Bernhardt’s haunting self-portrait in bronze.

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When I first took an interest in Parisian pastry, I kept coming across those same names (Ladurée, Stohrer, Blé Sucré). It seemed odd. In a city renowned for its work in pastry, and jammed with countless world-class chefs of every stripe. There had to be more than five patisseries worth visiting.

What conventional wisdom and guidebooks haven’t accounted for is the explosion of high-end pastry shops in the last several years. Having now downed hundreds of pastries from scores of Paris’s finest shops, I can confidently say there are more than five worth visiting—and that at least three of the most hyped are well worth skipping. Here’s my list of the Top 10 Best Pastry Shops in Paris, complete with suggestions of great picks at each!

1. A preteen runaway, Jacques Genin grew to helm pastry and chocolate operations for La Maison du Chocolat before branching off on his own. After years of privately furnishing his ultraluxe caramels and chocolates to France’s finest hotels, restaurants and cafés, he opened his eponymous shop in December 2008. Few argue that he’s now Paris’s No. 1 master of the classics.

Top Picks: Chocolate éclair, lemon tarte, baba au rhum, flan, caramel éclair, raspberry tart, chocolate tart and of course as many caramels, pâtes de fruits and chocolates as you can carry home.

2. The former head pastry chef at the Michelin three-star Guy Savoy, Hugues Pouget went on to become the 2003 Champion de France du Dessert before teaming up with childhood friend Sylvain Blanc to open Hugo & Victor in 2010. Their pastries’ aesthetics range from the simple to the architecturally sublime —all served up in a shop that looks like a hybrid between Cartier and Dior. Seasonal flavors for the pastries are matched with champagnes and fine wines, as selected by H&V’s sommelier, Frédéric Béal.

Top Picks: Mango macaron, Hugo Vanille, raspberry-pistachio macaron tart, Victor Verveine, Victor Pistache, Hugo Passion, Earl Grey chocolate tart, wild blueberry macaron and combawa lime macaron.

Pouchkine’s head chef, Emmanuel Ryon, is one of the most decorated pastry chefs in history, holding titles such as Pastry World Champion, French Dessert Champion and MOF Glacier (France’s highest honor in ice sculpture, ice cream and frozen desserts). The pieces he creates are more ornate than anything you’ve likely seen. The flavors, too, are a wildly unique fusion of French and Eastern European sensibilities.

Top Picks: Tutti Frutti, Napoléon, Or Noir, strawberry/pistachio-heart macaron, vanilla croissant, Roulé Pavot, Feijoa and Moskito.

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The winner of French “Top Chef” TV show in 2010, Romain Tischenko is at the helm at Le Galopin. On a recent visit, the room was buzzing. The space is minimally decorated, with yellow walls, simple wood tables and floor-to-ceiling windows wrapping around the corner of the bistro. There’s also a room downstairs; when we were there, a large group was dining semiprivately—always a nice option to find in petit Paris.

We were given a sheet of paper with seven courses handwritten on it and the day’s date: our no-choice dinner menu. The waitress asked if we had any issues and then helped us order a wine to go the distance. I fell in love with the silky-smooth Saumur from Domaine Guiberteau.

Our meal began with a flash-fried daurade that was crunchy and curious, with a jet-black exterior, but it primed our palates for the adventure ahead. A creamy lentil soup followed, augmented by a generous dollop of crème fraîche and a mélange of nuts, green onions and carrots adding a great crunch. Next up was a veal tartare that melted in my mouth, with strips of vegetables providing a nice textural contrast.

The first of the two mains was a vision of winter white: soft monkfish on a leek puree with accents of watercress to add color and flavor. We were then treated to rare slices of duck precisely prepared with a salty miso sauce and quartered squash slices.

34, rue Ste.-Marthe, 75010, 01 42 06 05 03. lunch and dinner Tues–Sat.

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New from Hexagon Accessories: The “Vive la France” Charm Bracelet on a sterling silver link chain. Buy it here for $65.

Now that a company website is de rigueur for a fashion business, everyone has one—and sometimes designers wonder if anyone is reading their around-the-studio posts.

Nathalie Seaver, a half-French fashion designer who owns an eponymous boutique for ready-to-wear and gifts in Los Angeles, found out last week just how powerful such a platform can be. After having seen Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, she mentioned on her site that someday she’d create her own version of a white-and-red dress worn by Marion Cotillard in the Oscar-winning film.

“It managed to be flirty and pretty in such a clean and unfussy way, and also look incredibly comfortable,” says Seaver. “I realized that I needed something like that in my own wardrobe.” Women in New York, Colorado, and Washington State—among other places—emailed Seaver to say that they needed it, too. They asked her when the dress would be available. There was nothing left to do but, um, make the thing.

Instead of sewing on red beads, which were used on costume designer Sonia Grande’s original, Seaver meticulously hand-painted dots on the pocket flaps and sleeves of dresses in rayon crepe ($428) and silk chiffon ($598). The painted dots give the dress a sportier twist, and made it more affordable than a beaded version.

It makes sense this this is the designer to make a dress inspired by the movie. Seaver’s mom, who is French, will receive the Legion d’Honneur in New York next week, and her American father, the late Richard Seaver, was among the most illustrious Paris expat editors in the 1950s. His memoir, The Tender Hour of Twilight, was recently published to great acclaim.