Paris Letters
Girlfriends! If you are single and full of untapped creative energy (say, you’ve “dabbled in photography, jewelry making”), former junk-mail writer turned memoirist MacLeod’s tell-a-lot might prove inspirational. Feeling trapped, MacLeod scraped up some cash (she helpfully lists the 100 ways she saved; number 32 is simple enough: “Traded stocks”), went to Paris (and proves she is in Paris by scattering French phrases throughout), and met an amazing man, a butcher—“He and his sexy jeans would bend down to stir up the potatoes that were roasting in drippings at the bottom of the oven.” MacLeod points out in an author’s note that most of the men she describes have more stunning qualities here than they “actually cultivated in themselves because that is how she once rolled.” The book itself, once rolling, may be chick lite, padded with sketches and letters and such, but it has a happy ending. “It had only occurred to me in that moment that I was indeed an artist. In Paris!” And she gets the guy, too. --Eloise Kinney