Mary Fleming’s novel Civilisation Française shares the compelling story of a young American in Paris.
Foreword Reviews wrote of the book:
“…taut and subtle….Within its intricate and nuanced portrait of Paris, the novel Civilisation Française explores compelling alliances and experiences.”
In her own words, here is Mary Fleming’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Civilisation Française:
Looking for direction, recently graduated Lily Owens moves to Paris in 1982 and enrolls in the Civilisation Française course at the Sorbonne. She also gets room and board in a mansion on the place des Vosges in exchange for helping housekeeper Germaine care for Madame Amenia Quinon, an elderly American expat who is going blind. The three women live alone in the big house, at first anyway. In the course of the year, Lily learns a lot about the sensual side of la civilisation française, mostly via cooking and sex, but music is always hovering in the background as another element in her education.
“Hungry Heart,” Bruce Springsteen
In an early scene, the innocent protagonist Lily is at her first Paris party. She’s just met a young Frenchman. When the dance music comes on, this is the first song. Lily has never heard it but feels liberated and energised by the beat, by dancing in Paris. Having never had a boyfriend or much parental love, Lily does indeed have a hungry heart. But there are some other pertinent lines in the song: “Everybody needs a place to rest/ Everybody wants to have a home.” Just what lost Lily is looking for.
“Talk,” Coldplay
If Coldplay front man Chris Martin were a girl and talking about his sister instead of his brother, pretty much every line of this song could have been written and sung by Lily. During her weird childhood in England, she was connected at the hip to her sister Jane, one year older and always sensible and reassuring. But on their first and only family trip to the US, Jane became smitten with the country her parents had left behind. A couple years later, Jane went to Barnard and now works for a bank in New York. The longer Jane is away, the further apart they drift, and Lily still feels the loss acutely. “I’ve been trying hard to reach you ‘cause I don’t know what to do/…I’m so scared about the future and I wanna talk to you” is just the way Lily feels at the beginning of the novel.
Later in the song is the line: “I feel like they’re talking in a language I don’t speak.” Though Lily has a child’s French and understands the words, she learns during her year of Civilisation Française to read between the lines, to discern what’s behind the words, a necessary step in fathoming any culture.
“California Girls,” The Beach Boys
On Lily’s first day at the Civilisation Française course, she meets Meredith, a blonde Californian (along with her friend and flat-mate Carol, a brunette from Chicago). Having grown up in England, Lily’s experience of Americans is limited, and she is fascinated by the sensual California girl. “I mean, why can’t I be more like flouncy Meredith? She hugs and kisses people with abandon, exudes a carnal warmth.” Lily spends a lot of time at Meredith and Carol’s place and there’s always music on. At one point she’s listening to this very song: “Meredith—head tilted up, eyes closed—is singing along as if they’d written the song for her.” Later, Lily realises that Meredith has her weaknesses too, an important moment in our heroine’s coming of age.
“Je ne regrette rien,” Edith Piaf
It’s hard to write a play list for a novel about Paris in the last century without including a song from Edith Piaf. And regret has a big role in the life of Madame Amenia Quinon; as she nears the end, she is pre-occupied by what she might have done differently. But she lived through two world wars that had profound effects on her and her loved ones. What is the extent of her free will and how has it been limited by circumstances beyond her control? She would have listened to Edith belt out this song in 1960, but by then it was too late for Amenia. Too much damage had already been done.
“Redemption Song,” Bob Marley
The novel takes place in the early 1980s, when I first came to Paris. Bob Marley had just died and reggae in general – I listened to lots of Jimmy Cliff – was popular. In my story, one of the characters, a white French guy, has dread locks, which Lily had thought were only sported by Jamaican musicians. Marley’s song starts off about slave history, but the main redemptive message is this: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/ None but ourselves can free our minds.” I hope Lily was listening; as noted above, it was already too late for Madame.
“Ascenseur pour l’échafaud,” Miles Davis
This music was written by Miles Davis for Louis Malle’s eponymous film (Frantic in the US). It’s edgy, as Madame is, and moody like Lily. While the music is playing in the movie, there’s lots of driving around Paris, so listening to it always reminds me of the city. Plus jazz has always been very big in Paris. In fact, at one point in the novel, Lily goes to a club in the Latin Quarter with some friends. Though she doesn’t recognise him, there’s a poster of Miles on the wall.
“Free Ride,” Nick Drake
Without giving away too much about the novel, suffice it to say that a group of free riders play a big role in the story. You could even argue that I should have chosen another song from this album (Pink Moon), Parasite. I’ve also chosen Nick Drake because Lily, though she claims to have little musical education, couldn’t have missed hearing his music during her adolescence in England. Having committed suicide at 26, Drake had become a cult figure by the late 70s in Great Britain, when and where I discovered his music. And Lily too struggles with depression, The Mood as she calls it.
“Slip Slidin’ Away,” Paul Simon
I don’t mean to insist on mental health here, but several characters in the book suffer from some form of instability. Lily’s mother and sister, for example, have undergone treatment for unstipulated (this is 1982 after all) psychiatric episodes, and she worries about herself, when overcome by The Mood. There’s also Madame’s (long dead) mother-in-law, who overshadowed her early Paris years. Having lost her elder son in the trenches of World War I and her husband to the Influenza three years later, Hortense Quinon fell into a stupor from which she never recovered. No question several characters in the book subscribe to the line: “A good day ain’t got no rain/ A bad day’s when I lie in bed and think about how things might have been.”
“Je t’aime…moi non plus,” Serge Gainsbourg
Like Lily, a 22-year old Jane Birken moved to France from Britain, in this case in the late 1960s. Not long after she and Serge Gainsbourg became a couple, and they sang this Gainsbourg song together. Birkin’s bedroom voice and heavy sighing created a scandal but made the song iconic. When Lily arrives in the early ‘80s, it was still being played all the time. Though she doesn’t mention it in the novel, she couldn’t have missed hearing Birkin and Gainsbourg making aural love on the radio somewhere. Civilisation Française is also a year of sex education for Lily.
“Ghosts,” Laura Marling
The relationship in this song reminds me of Lily and that man she was dancing to Hungry Heart with, Thibaud. Both of them are haunted by ghosts of their pasts, even if not those of relationships. There’s something of the victim in Thibaud; he feels hard-done-by in life. And I like the line sung to him: “Lover please, do not fall to your knees/ It’s not like I believe in everlasting love.” Do Lily and Thibaud? Read the book and judge for yourself.
“Là ci darem la mano,” Mozart’s Don Giovanni
In Babette’s Feast, a film that glorifies French cuisine and l’art de la table (everything that goes into creating a convivial meal), this duet is sung by a young Philippa with the visiting Achille Papin in French. The longer they sing, the more charged the air between the two becomes. The message is that music can be as sensual as food, all that this strict Danish religious community fears and abhors. In the novel, Lily’s discovery of music and French cuisine go hand-in-hand with her education in the bedroom. More broadly, what she learns outside of the classroom proves more life-changing than the coursework during her year of Civilisation Française.
Mary Fleming was born in Chicago and has lived in France for many years. After working as a journalist and consultant, she turned to fiction and has written three novels, Someone Else, The Art of Regret and Civilisation Française (Heliotrope Books), which came out in July of this year. Her bi-weekly photo-essay, A Paris-Perche Diary, tracks city and country (Normandy) life. Find her online at website: Mary Fleming Author, blog: A Paris Perche Diary, and Instagram: @flemingm6