True Pleasures: A Memoir of Women in Paris Book

I visited Paris for the first time in November 1976. It was cold; it was the last week of a nine week trip around Europe and all of us just wanted to get back to London! I knew there was much more to see and find out about this tantalising city and now, finally, I am making my tentative way back there.
In True Pleasures Lucinda Holdforth introduces us to some fascinating women of Paris. I have heard of Colette, of course, and read one of her books. I have read a book of Nancy Mitford letters recently and want to read The Blessing but within these pages there are a troop of celebrated women and the author illuminates some of the brightest stars - how they created their own worlds and how they lived their lives in the Paris that was theirs.
Firstly though we meet the author herself. At the start of the memoir she is lost and trying to find a new way to live her life. What better way to do that in than in Paris and as Holdforth walks the streets of her favourite city we begin to find out about the brave and original women who have lived there. As the author writes: "For many of them, like me, things didn't necessarily make sense from day to day. Life was a mysterious and elusive business. But they held their nerve, and time vindicated their courage."
There is George Sand settling in the Quai Saint-Michel in one of the garrets of the big house on the corner of the block opposite the Morgue in early 1900s. We meet the women who lived in or near Place des Vosges - my favourite is Ninon de Lanclos who once famously said: "The woman who has loved but one man will never know love."
There is Hotense Mancini who left her husband and four children in 1668 to pursue her fortune. There is of course Rose de Beauharnais who became Napoleon's Josephine and Madam de Pompadour who died of tuberculosis at Versailles in 1764. And let's not forget Marie Antoinette!
Pamela Harriman, Edith Wharton and Natalie Barney are some of the women who lived there in recent times and I particularly enjoyed reading about Nancy Mitford in my favourite chapter of the book - The Language of Love. As Holdforth states so eloquently: "People talk a lot nowadays about having it all. Having the husband, having the career, having the children. And there's a cruel implication that missing out on any of these experiences is necessarily a permanent blight on life itself. Like most of us, however, Nancy Mitford didn't have it all. She graciously accepted that it just didn't work out like that. She merely had whatever was hers to have. And she made the most of it." As did so many of the other incredible women of Paris. Highly recommended.