ParisPages

PARIS PAGES, a novel in one hundred fragments, is published in November 2023 by Red Squirrel Press. 

You are invited to the launch on 22 November at the Lit and Phil, Newcastle, part of the Books on Tyne Festival. Event is FREE but ticketed. Reserve your ticket here: 

Clara, Sadie, László, Paris: three characters, one city, and the power of Art will change them all.

Clara’s done with psychotherapy and wants to be a biographer. Sadie’s a photographer whose work with traumatised migrants has taken its toll. Now she has ethical dilemmas about the value of Art and is suffering creative block. Their lives intertwine with the enigmatic presence of László who personifies the very essence of creativity.

In 100 fragments the lyrical prose charts the shifting balances within and between the characters.

Will Clara finally give in to her own limitations? Will Sadie rediscover her creativity? No-one can undo the past, but how often will they repeat the same mistakes? And László? He alone seems to understand the complexities of human connection, and the indelible ways creativity shapes and transforms us.

When a lost psychotherapist meets a traumatised artist, who rescues whom?

About the Author:
Shelley Day is a British writer based in Paris. Her debut novel The Confession of Stella Moon won the Andrea Badenoch Prize. Her debut short story collection What are you like won the Edge Hill Prize. Shelley worked as a lawyer and later as a lecturer and research professor in London before settling down to write fiction. Paris Pages is her second novel.

“A novel in fragments, a perfect book for our time. These are pieces that re-enchant the world, underlining all the small things that usually escape our attention. Rich and inspiring, and a fabulous chronicle of Paris as it was before Lockdown.”
Yan Rucar, writer, former researcher in digital humanities, Universités of Ottawa, and Paris-Sorbonne

“A thought-provoking and beautifully crafted novel. Rich, timely and compelling in its quest to unravel questions of personal and creative responsibility framed by the challenges of contemporary politics. I loved it.” Anne Bottomley, Kent Law School

“This is a remarkable book. I loved every word of it, its subjects, objects, every idea in it, the form of it, the energies of it, its lyricism, its personnages. The format is superb – its fragmentary nature, its poetic interludes. Each fragment is engaging on its own yet building towards the integrity of the novel. And the richness of the allusions to Louise Bourgeois, Beckett, Patti Smith, Perec makes for an engaging read. I love the Celtic knottedness of the characters, and above all I love how it’s always just beyond my grasp so that I want to read it again and gain more from each reading. This should be a beautifully received book everywhere.” Lindsay Macgregor, award winning poet and author of The Weepers and Desperate Fishwives

“A novel of 100 fragments, a lyrical meditation on art and creativity, how they change us, and can even save us. This book left me with so much to think about.” Catherine Simpson, award winning novelist, memoirist, author of One Body

The book is AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER!!

You can order direct from the publisher  or through your usual indie book store. 

Many of you, I hope, will be coming to one of the launches but others who won’t make it to any events might want to consider pre-ordering. 

Thousands of books are published every year. Booksellers will stock known best sellers that make sure money. But they also like to curate a good range of lesser-known works for readers to choose among. 

This is where pre-ordering comes in!

Asking your local bookstore to pre-order a particular title draws their attention to the book and to the author. Pre-ordering is especially helpful to books published by indie presses whose publicity budgets can’t compete with those of the big commercial publishers. Your pre-order also indicates a local interest and the store may then be receptive to requests by authors to do a meet-the-author event.

A bookseller championing a book can completely change that book’s fortune! And the success of a book will help indie publishers and indie stores thrive in a world increasingly dominated by the big on-line sellers. 

Please also consider asking your local library to order the book – this supports the author, the library, the publisher, as well as the local community.

If you’d like to pre-order PARIS PAGES, please go to the publisher’s website, or pass on the details to your chosen bookstore.

PARIS PAGES by Shelley Day, available here

PARIS PAGES is a linked series of short pieces in 100 fragments, the core pieces were written on-the-hoof in Paris between October 2018 and March 2020 at which point Coronavirus hit and the world changed shape.  

The full text was drafted from the core pieces in Scotland in 2020 and France in 2021 during the first and second Lockdowns.

Here’s one the original core pieces –

These Bridges We Are Crossing: Sunday, UK Election week, December 2019

How the story travels towards its own ending. Today it is clear in which direction the river is heading, though it’s not always. And me, I walk through the bird market on Sunday mornings, the cages all lined up and all the coloured birds are singing. The river today is mud brown and fast flowing and I have no idea of the name of this bridge we are crossing.

On the other side, the Hôtel de Ville has carousels and Christmas trees and is that a choir singing in Norwegian? Ah, how Christmas and languages connect and divide us.

Yesterday, in Gallimard in the rue de l’Université I was reading about Pierre Alechinsky and he was talking about Les Tireurs de Langue and there was me thinking it meant terrors, or horrors. But no. I ask, and the Polish girl on the desk looks it up and she shows me: it means guns. Then later again I find it’s not firearms at all, it’s not guns, it’s tongues.

Now, over the bridge and looking the length of the Rue de Rivoli towards la Défense and as the crow flies it’s dead straight like a rifle pointing.

Then there’s the coloured curling plastic of the Pompidou Arts Centre, its guts exposed and tangled, its entrails precious, its digested languages universal memories all but erased by the yelling and shouting and screaming of Capital, here in this flashbulb city where generations of writers have peeled and scraped at their own palimpsest skins; and still we search for the bullet that might put a stop to something, anything to quell the swellings of protest, anything to pierce the screaming within.

Walking up the rue Beaubourg and I see someone has painted rainbow lines on the zebra crossing outside the LGBT Centre. It has bars on its windows and there’s been an attempt at a swastika on the wall outside. When we were kids we would try to draw swastikas. We didn’t know what they were. We thought they were just ordinary shapes that were difficult to draw and always came out wrong, confused legs all running in the wrong direction.

COVER DESIGN by Nicolai Sclater @ornamentalconifer with grateful thanks