Joanna Biggar's Blog

    Though a chameleon in her looks, as befitted an aspiring actress with many roles to play and eyes that changed color according to whim, Jocelyn was ever the cool, beautiful blond, adored by men and inspiring awe in women.

“The boulanger hurrying to his bakery along Rue Racine [believed] the church bells merely an intrusion on his one holy practice, the worship of beautiful women…this day he sees her, a tall, alluring figure wrapped in a foreigner’s beige coat.  Her head is covered with a dark scarf, but he can see wisps of blond hair and a chiseled, oval face.”     “Perhaps it is a lucky day because of this good omen.  A beautiful woman…That of course is where trouble begins, too. He sighs, knowing this. All men know this. But he is not just any man; he is a Parisian. Therefore, he knows it doubly. For, as Jocelyn has just reminded him, Paris is a woman.”

Jocelyn had picked her personal patron saint, Sainte Genevieve, savior of Paris, long before arriving. Once there, however, that icon morphed into a more contemporary one, a woman Jocelyn could aspire to resemble.

“I saw her,” Jocelyn whispered excitedly.

“Who?”

“Catherine Deneuve. Going right down Saint-Germaine. She looks just like Sainte Genvieve. Twentieth century version.”         

Catherine Deneuve, imagen_medium

Read Full Post »

   “It was still early in those days along the Seine, when the trees yellowed, turned crimson, and dropped their leaves to dance into the streets, that Gracie took steps unlike any she’d taken…She had absorbed enough information from watching Camille and the rest of us, and especially those young French girls heading to high school, that she knew  she wanted to move in a new way.” 

   “Height and glamour at once, she figured, and headed to Galeries Lafayette to buy high-heeled shoes.”                                        

 “I like to picture her choosing, though she had no idea of her size in French, a pair of leather shoes with long, thin heels. They were the color of red rust or the leaves of the vineyards, Napa Valley, in fall, she said.  Across the toe lay a small strip of lizard skin.‘They were classy. For once in my life, I said yes before even asking the price.'”

Read Full Post »