Clean Start

By Patricia Margaret Page

Book Overview

Here is a remarkable novel with superb characterization, wonderful atmosphere, and a story that will resonate with readers long after they have finished it. Set in Paris in the 1960s, where the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0897335066
• ISBN13: 9780897335065
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Pastis with a Twist

If you have visited Paris and loved it you will love this book. Its delicious weaving of the sights, smells, tastes and texture of Paris in the 1960's quickly gets you in and you are hooked. Here you meet the principal characters, Tom, a truculent Englishman and his new wife Jane, an Australian girl from a far distant and contrastingly naive world of gum trees and koalas who have arrived to stake a claim at the fringes of the capital of culture.Jane's heart sinks when she hears another Australian accent as Sally washes up in Paris and breaks in on her bohemian world. Tom, a confirmed "leg man" (its the implications of legs that attracts him)has to revise his scientifically precise scale of perfection to accommodate the "implications" of the beautiful new arrival.How Tom and Jane end up getting both rather more and rather less than they bargained for in this triangle is the twist here and as they do so they learn a lesson in worldliness and win the reader's affection.It is a great book for travellers (which by definition includes most Australians), those who are interested in the Paris of Sartre and anyone who likes a story about self discovery.

Paris Match

Paris in the Sixties - the last days of the Bohemian Paris of Joyce, Hemingway and the Left Bank. Soon the reaction to the student revolution of 1968 will lead to a conservative backlash and to a modernised, suburbanised Paris, but as yet it is still an escape from the cultural deserts of Australia and Northern England. A young couple are living on meagre earnings from teaching English in a run-down language institute; in their spare time Jane paints, Tom writes poetry. Their apartment, it turns out, has a direct connection to the rat-infested sewers of the city, but they are happy with their alternative lifestyle until they invite an unusual, but fascinating person to live with them. They are then made to realise what a really alternative lifestyle means. Are Tom and Jane a match or a mismatch? The novel, while showing the bitter-sweet quality of the young couple's relationship and giving a nostalgic picture of a now-vanished Paris, is full of comic episodes, notably the description of the language school and of the adventures of Sally, the couple's wild friend.

A Page Turner

I loved this book! Vibrant, warm, clever, subtle, fabulous characterization, great atmosphere -- I felt like I'd lived in bohemian 60s Paris just through reading it. Her compassionate portrayal of these complex characters makes for a rewarding and sustaining read: you have to admire the author's skill at giving such lyrical and realistic expression to this all-too-human couple's dilemmas. Patricia Page allows the reader to see the world from the inside out, her manipulation of characters is so subtle as to be almost invisible. A particularly fine achievement for a first-time writer. The story involved, enthralled, delighted me -- and it was only long after I put it down that the magic dispelled, and I could realise fully Page's skill. Highly recommended. It'll make you think twice about wearing a skirt.