cover image Our Paris: Sketches from Memory

Our Paris: Sketches from Memory

Edmund White. Alfred A. Knopf, $22 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-679-44166-3

White's stunning achievements as a novelist, short story writer (most recently, Skinned Alive, LJ 6/15/95), and journalist are now augmented by a charming, funny, telling series of vignettes of the Paris neighborhood where he and his lover, Hubert Sorin, lived. Through White's keen observations and Sorin's charming illustrations, the everyday becomes extraordinary, whether it is a walk with their dog or a description of an ordinary Parisian church. Blending the past and the present, with pungent asides into people's character, White's writing has never been finer. Sorin, an architect by training, died of AIDS in 1994, so we shall never see the full fruition of his obvious talent for comic illustration. Recommended for all collections.--David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia