Publisher's Weekly Review
Sciolino (La Seduction), an American-born writer who now lives in Paris, takes readers for a cultural and historical stroll along her adopted city's venerable rue des Martyrs in this warmhearted, well-researched gem. The street, located in the vibrant ninth arrondissement, is largely untouched by progress, and the greengrocer, cheese shop, butcher, baker and other old-time merchants feel quaint; there is a cart-pushing knife sharpener and a mender of antique barometers. Famed transvestite performance nightspot Cabaret Michou, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church, and the Grand Synagogue of Paris are long-lived neighborhood landmarks. Historically, the neighborhood was host to Thomas Jefferson, Emile Zola, and bohemian artists, musicians, writers, and critics; Sciolino occasionally feels their ghostly reappearance. "For me, it is the last real street in Paris, a half-mile celebration of the city in all its diversity," she writes, adding, "This street represents what is left of the intimate, human side of Paris." Sciolino, a seasoned journalist and former Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, also addresses contemporary culture such as France's rising anti-Semitism, recounting the terrorist attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in January 2015, after which the street's merchants placed "Je suis Charlie" signs in their windows. Readers will appreciate her mixture of the tenacity of journalism and a warm memoir-like quality. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
After taking a tart look at her adopted country in La Seduction (2011, etc.), Sciolino shows a softer side in this affectionate portrait of her Ninth Arrondissement neighborhood. Not that the veteran foreign correspondent for the New York Times and Newsweek indulges in unbridled sentimentality. Yes, the author fell in love with her apartment when she walked into its cobblestoned courtyard and "was transported back to the first half of the nineteenth century," and she praises the shop-lined rue des Martyrs 500 feet from her front door because it "has retained the feel of a small village." But in an early chapter lamenting the closing of a family-run fish store, Sciolino acknowledges that the frozen fish sold for half the price at the local supermarket is actually pretty good. She still misses the chance to linger and talk fish at the old poissonnerie. She relishes the formal intimacy of relationships with the merchants, and her brisk, lucid prose conveys the charm of unspoken rules that govern all interactions: newcomers must prove they know the code before they too get the freshest piece of fish cut in the back room or the loan of a book they can't afford to buy. Sciolino understands this mindset, because her Sicilian-American grandfather had the same distrust of strangers. Over the course of five years she became accepted enough to throw the wildly successful party bringing together the street's two halves: the more gentrified lower portion in the Ninth, and the tawdrier, cheaper stretch that runs through Montmartre. "Le Potluck" closes the book on an elegiac note, but chapters in between also chronicle darker moments: a columnist who survived the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo lives on the rue des Martyrs, and a high school down the way annually commemorates 19 students and one teacher killed by the Nazis. A pungent evocation of the conflict and compromise between tradition and innovation that define modern urbanism. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
On the Seine's right bank, Paris' rue des Martyrs climbs north from near the Place Saint-Georges almost to the foot of Montmartre's Sacré-Coeur. Newspaper reporter Sciolino moved adjacent to the rue des Martyrs, settling into a delightful apartment above a fireworks merchant. Falling in love with the neighborhood, she made friends with merchants, tradespeople, and residents all along the street, and bit by bit they shared neighborhood history and invited her behind doors to see wonders casual visitors would never discover. Yet on even so relatively short a street, Sciolino reports disdain of those dwelling on either side of the great boulevard bisecting the rue des Martyrs between two arrondissements. As in many urban areas, residents resist economic and social forces that strip neighborhood character, replacing unique shopfronts with chain stores that displace owners accustomed to living above their businesses. Readers familiar with Sciolino's dispatches to the New York Times will value her deft reporting and witty prose.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Rue des Martyrs is more than just a street, it's an enchanting and bustling community in Paris. At just over half a mile long, spanning between the Ninth and 18th arrondissements, this street is filled with four- and five-story buildings of varying architectural designs, with picturesque wrought-iron balconies and shuttered windows and small businesses at street level. As the author (La Seduction), a former Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, explores her neighborhood, she describes its fascinating history, from ancient churches and the saints and martyrs the street may be named after to the 19th-century Cirque Medrano. The quaint cafés and shops remain locally owned, per Paris law, and their merchants and artisans are the leading characters of the book-and of the street. There's Roger Henri, who pushes a cart with a bell offering his knife-sharpening services; Michou, the owner and creator of the transvestite cabaret at No. 80; and Laurence Gillery, the woman who restores antique barometers, the last of her kind. The atmosphere on rue des Martyrs is refreshing and enticing in our modern world. VERDICT A must for readers who are interested in travel, Paris, or the expatriate life. [See Prepub Alert, 5/11/15.]-Melissa Keegan, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
