Paris dreambook

by Lawrence Osborne

Book by Osborne, Lawrence

Genres: Paris, Nonfiction

210 pages, Hardcover

First published May 24, 1990

About the author

Lawrence Osborne is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, including The Forgiven (now a major motion picture starring Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain), and Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel, a New York Times Notable Book and nominated for an Edgar Award, as well as six books of nonfiction, including Bangkok Days. He has led a nomadic life, living in Paris, New York, Mexico, and Istanbul, and he currently resides in Bangkok.

Reviews

[JDK1962 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned after preface and less than a chapter. Lost patience with this almost instantly. If you're going to launch yourself into flights of rhetorical fancy, you need to first do some groundwork to make the reader care. This book was like having someone yell "follow me!" as they push you into an open manhole.

[Ladyknightstar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a cheeky, and by turns wicked roasting of the City of Paris by a British writer. If you aren't used to this sense of very dry British humor when describing completely absurd circumstances in satire, for a frame of reference it's similar to if there was a "Black Adder goes to Underground Paris." Remember perhaps the first time you read Pride and Prejudice or Shakespeare? How it took a moment to readjust to the finesse, subtlety and complexity of another time to understand it? Well, it may require a similar patience upon first reading Osborne . It also is a bit inside jokes for people who love history and literature. I have a feeling some of the satire may be lost on those unfamiliar with Christine De Pizan's City of Ladies. The book is more of a complex series of vignettes layering on top of each other. If you enjoy Tom Robbins or Christopher Moore, and enjoy drier senses of sophisticated British humor this may grow to be a favorite read.

[Fahrender · Rating 4 out of 5]

Osborne knows Paris. Dreambook is an in-depth thing. I don't mind getting with his program as he knows what he's talking about and didn't write it simply to get published. If you expect to be seduced, you'll have to get with the program, be willing to do your part. Osborne is a stylist with a sense of the surreal, writing about the right city.

[Cleanthes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Reader beware: this is not a guidebook for the average tourist. Rather, it’s an adventure through the rawest parts of Paris — a Paris most tourists never saw in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it captures an era of Turkish baths, Brazilian transvestites, the seedy streets of Saint-Denis, and more. Dark, vivid, and unapologetically unpolished, it offers an engrossing snapshot of a city in transition. I’d love to visit Paris to see whether these once-gritty areas have now been gentrified — but as a historical portrait, it’s fascinating.

[Charburger]

Well, that was ... interesting.

[Mahala]

Onanistic, but enjoyably so. And lovely language, especially in the Turkish bath chapter.