The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 19 February 1998
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. I 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.