Why a Booktrail?
Various: You’ll never walk around a city in the same way again!
Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London
What you need to know before your trail
Aah the ‘liberating possibilities of a good walk’. Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse traces the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and moves us to Paris, via Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring along the way the paths taken by the flâneuses who have lived and walked in those cities.
From nineteenth-century novelist George Sand to artist Sophie Calle, from war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to film-maker Agnes Varda, Flâneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed woman encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.
A booktrailer’s book!
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
Flaneuse
Are we individual or are we part of a crowd?
It is 1929. Women smoking in public has become more of an irdinary sight. But the photograph stil retains an element of transgression.
France – Paris
“The streets of Paris had a way of making me stop in y tracks, my heart suspended”
Georges Sand took to this city as she moved to Paris during the 1831 student demonstrations and witnessed the events from her flat overlooking the Place Saint-Michel
Japan – Tokyo
Is Rappongi – the entertainment another example of a more modern ghetto?
Italy – Venice
The word ‘ghetto’ originates with the Jews in Venice – the Venetian ghetto was built on the old iron foundry in Cannaregio, which was called the gheto
New York – Long Island
Now when I go home to Long Island, I find the empty streets of my parents’ neighbourhood terrifying. The very appearance of another human, walking on foot seems out of place and menacing.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
A little penguin told me I should read this book and I loved it! On paper, it’s about women who walk around cities. But there’s something special about the word Flaneur for a man or Flaneuse for a women and this is a special look at walking around in a landscape they notice and evoke.
Through the eyes of women who walk around a city either alone or not, we see reactions of others, from how men in certain cities over the years have considered them odd for walking out on their own, to ‘explorers’ like the author of the book. There’s so much to this book that I don’t know where to start reviewing to be honest but this would be the most mammoth booktrail ever if you followed in their footsteps.
How we view cities and how ghettos have taken on a new meaning over the years particularly fascinated me. In fact most of the book did. I’ve travelled all over, often alone and identified with a lot of this book and its wry observations. I can’t say I’ve ever had had to wear men’s clothes so as not to be pestered though!
As well as the cities, the literary figures and the books which that city evokes are mentioned. The insight into the books and literary angle was fascinating! Sometimes I would have liked to have read more about the women themselves as well though.
It’s a good way to think more about the art of wandering in a city for it is an art – and the cities on this list – Paris in particular evokes a lovely gentle stroll that I would like to do in its entirety next time I’m there.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London
Author/Guide: Lauren Elkin Destination: Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London Departure Time: 2000s
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