The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 19 February 1998
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
In its brief 116 pages, this romantic book covers a vast ground during the 1968 student uprisings and general strikes in Paris. There are sell-outs, sincere artists, violent revolutionaries, and literary characters populating that landscape. Woven through those events is an intense romance between an American art teacher and a Portugese/French businessman who claims to be an anarchist. Her doubts and his mystery complicate the love affair. But the core of this book, written 20 years later, seems to be a nostalgic look back for Ferlinghetti. Paris is an attractive and turbulent place in 1968. The vignettes and the story are hazy as well as premonitory. This reader enjoyed the romance, and was mildly confused at the author's attempts to update the revolutionary tone for the present day. Overall, though, the book is poetic and romantic.