amynbell's review
5.0
I had to savor this book because it felt like the book I've been looking for a large portion of my life. The characters are very well-developed. The story takes place, as the title suggests, in Paris in 1888. The narrator of the book is Phillipe ("Tic-Toc"), a single doctor that endures the disfunctional family antics of his patients for the occasional free home-cooked meal. He doesn't seem to be like other doctors in town that feel that the best remedies must be the most painful. Phillipe is the casual friend of a free-spirited young girl named Madou. She can be found riding her bicycle around town in scandalous bloomers or attached at the hip to Choice, a native American Indian she's become enamoured with that is visiting Paris as a part of a Wild West show. Madou's father is constantly threatening to send her or her sisters to the Salpêtrière insane asylum for "hysteria" just because they don't really fit into polite French society. So the book centers around 3 people that are out of place: the doctor that doesn't agree with the extreme remedies of the day and feels no need for love, a French girl who was born a hundred years too early to be as free-spirited as she is, and a native American Indian that is incredibly depressed with homesickness in a city whose parks are nothing like the wilderness he knows and loves.
I love this conversation between Madou and Phillipe:
Some people spend their entire lives looking for a place to belong. Unfortunately, many people do look in the wrong places and find themselves ultimately miserable. I'm glad that I did move to Oklahoma and did find people more like me eventually. I was the person that went on a journey and the stranger that came to town. I might have changed over the years, but I still keep searching for people more like me ... and finding them.
I love this conversation between Madou and Phillipe:
"What if I don't belong anywhere, Phillipe? What happens to people who don't belong to any group or family or political movement?
I was glad that perhaps she had an insight about herself when she couldn't keep up with her man of the Wild West. ...
"Well," I said, "I suppose one could be given a place on the outskirts of the community and status as a wizard or hermit."
"You've created your own place, Tic-Toc, your own little 'outskirts' with your profession, and your books, and your music. I don't want to be alone like you."
"Loneliness is not the worst thing in the world, is it? What about being imprisoned with someone who doesn't admire who you are - in a society or a marriage with people who increasingly despise you?"
... "Will you marry him," I asked.
"She looked away again and said, "I don't know. I just know that I don't belong in Paris."
Some people spend their entire lives looking for a place to belong. Unfortunately, many people do look in the wrong places and find themselves ultimately miserable. I'm glad that I did move to Oklahoma and did find people more like me eventually. I was the person that went on a journey and the stranger that came to town. I might have changed over the years, but I still keep searching for people more like me ... and finding them.
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