Book Reviews- Love from Paris by Alexandra Potter

I just finished reading Alexandra Potter’s ‘Love from Paris’. I can say, blindly, that I have always enjoyed reading Alexandra’s books, she has her way with words, and I was more than over-joyed she was doing a sequel to ‘The Love Detective’. 

The novel starts with a very flat tone, not revealing the actual underlying story of the book, even the back doesn’t give too much away. And I have this really bad habit, like the novel’s protagonist, Ruby, of reading the last pages first, so I know what happened. See, the thing is, once I know what happened, my curiosity really spikes and then I want to know HOW it happened. It’s really how books and I work.

I will be honest, I read The Love Detective when it come out, sometime last year, and I didn’t remember much, except it was Ruby, her runaway sister, Indian Royal Yogi dude, train rides, Goa and Udaipur. And that’s not even 1/10th of the story. But, loving Alexandra’s style, I picked it up and in beginning I was just reading, trying to remember what happened.

The book didn’t really kick-start till she was in “the Apartment” of Emmanuelle in Paris. Well, until she discovered the hidden letters, and then I couldn’t put the book down. The letters as lovely as they were, will really touch a string to your heart. And with a mystery after another unfolding, it just made for a really heart-warming read. I had read the end, so I knew there was a kid. I thought it’d be Jean-Paul, but how can a kid born in 1940 be 19? Clearly, I didn’t do my math. But, there had to be a kid. (Spoiler- it was Jean-Paul’s grammy).

You’d think it’d be about Ruby and Jack, I thought it’d be Ruby and Jack, but Ruby was just a detective and brilliant one at that at discovering perhaps a beautiful love story of a precious French girl and her American boyfriend. Throughout the book I wondered, he was American, why didn’t Manu’s (Emmanuelle)’s father let her marry Henry. It was towards the end you find out why. Because he was African-American. Alexandra touched on a delicate issue of race and freedom in France with a lovely back-story. I was so excited to get to the end, but I wish it didn’t.

While I loved the book, I wished there had been a little more on Gigi and Grace, they were an important part in unfolding the secrets, but they were hardly elaborated on. I wish she’d done that. Apart from that, I can’t complain. I loved it.

The tag line did pull at my heart strings, because tell me –

How far would you go for love?

An Ideal Match: Women and their Shoes

During that one distressing day when nothing goes your way, when you’re confident has hit the lowest point, when nothing seems to be pretty enough anymore?  That’s when shoes step in. Walking around the town, totally depressed and one look at those beautiful heels and I’m all for it.

Recent studies have shown that a woman’s “shoe obsession disorder” (personally, it’s really not a disorder or obsession but rather a necessity) can really boost her career. Shopping for shoes is an exhilarating experience. These were the lines of a journalist, I’d read somewhere.

Men who aren’t “shoe fetishists” (seriously- who comes up with such terms?), find it hard to swallow and understand the deep relationship a woman and her shoes have.

Remember Cinderella? The one with her glass slipper (clearly a symbol of virginity, by the way), pumpkin ride and rats for horses? Well, it wasn’t that Cinderella’s step sisters and all the other girls in town were after the Prince Charming, they were only in it for the glass slipper. Believe it or not, shoes has always been just something women love. Many actresses, also, confess to owning several pairs of foot wears. One for everything. Be it Keira Knightly, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Kareena Kapoor.

The growth in the sales of shoes is always rising whether come the recession or drought (you are getting the drift right?). Studies and sale reports show that while the sale of everything had hit up a bottom line, being the recession and all, the sale for footwear has gone up compared to earlier years! Shoes can cost a fortune; yet while money itself does not bring happiness, pair of new shoes brings on a kind of exaltation.

But what is about shoes that us women really love? Unlike clothes, shoes have a distinct advantage. Whether you’re fat or thin, short or tall, beautiful or ugly, you can buy all the shoes your heart desires. They are capable of making you feel sexy, elegant or sporty at a single stroke. In other words, feet don’t have hips, feet don’t have thighs. Feet are our friends. High heels make women look more appealing. Wearing them not only makes woman’s legs look longer, but changes her whole posture and make her carry herself differently. Of course, it stands true only if a woman knows how to walk on high heels properly. Making wide steps and having knees and back bent doesn’t make anyone sexier.

Everything has a biological reason, and surprisingly so does the obsession of buying and wearing footwear. First of all, shopping is always such an amazing mood buster! You can be tired, exhausted, angry, hurt or anything, the sun couldn’t shine but you’d know when nothing else is around, shopping is what will stay with you, always. Well, here goes the biological reason- “The neurotransmitter dopamine is released, providing a feel-good high, similar to taking a drug, The dopamine increases until you swipe your debit card.” says Martin Lindstrom, a branding expert. Usually, that’s when the guilt steps in, except when the item you’re purchasing are shoes! “Shoppers rationalize shoes as a practical buy — something they can wear multiple times a week — so they hold on to that pleasurable feeling longer,” says Lindstrom. Buying new footwear stimulates an area of the brain’s prefrontal cortex termed the collecting spot.

Our intimate relationship with shoes begins shortly after we learn to walk. As soon as we want to feel “grown-up,” we slip on a pair of our mother’s shoes, preferably high heels, instantly heightening our sense of what it means to be female. And then what happens? We grow up and get to be the same size as Mummy and our personality begins to assert itself with the first independent purchase of shoes. As adults, we ask shoes to be our representatives. At any given moment, they are indicators of our age, mood and desires. Whenever my mom and I go for “shoe shopping spree”, my dad just shakes his head and keeps on murmuring, “This is insane”. And when after we buy what we require and we didn’t, he just sorts of ignore our little obsession. After all, he can’t really do anything about family, can he?

When you’re also a woman, what are the first two things you notice about another woman? It is the clothes and the footwear. The type of footwear you wear defines the type of person you are, sort of like character analysis. Collecting different types of footwear, types include color, heel length, design, etc, etc. isn’t anything wrong. Buying a different type of footwear stimulates in us that mini-adrenaline rush similar to that of a stamp collector when acquires a rare find.

To sum it up, there are so many outfits we wear so repeating shoes isn’t quite a possibility now, is it?