Features
Paris with Danielle Steel
Imagine you’re in the City of Light with the author of Complications
We’re living vicariously through stories set around the world through the eyes of our authors, including Mexico with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Morocco with Laila Lalami, France with Sanaë Lemoine, South Korea with Michelle Zauner, Indonesia with Jesse Q. Sutanto, Malaysia with Zen Cho, Jamaica with Nicola Yoon, Brazil with Gabriella Burnham, and Antarctica with Maggie Shipstead and Julian Sancton.
We turned to bestselling author Danielle Steel to learn her experience living and visiting one of the most beautiful cities in the world. She is the author of several international bestsellers including Complications and The Butler, both of which are set in Paris. Complications follows the scandal and tragedy that erupt against the backdrop of an exclusive hotel, and The Butler centers around the collision of two different worlds and two very different lives. Learn more about her inspiring life as well as her favorite places to visit in Paris!
What is one of your favorite memories of living in or visiting Paris?
As a young mother, living in the States then, I loved visiting Paris with my husband and nine children, taking them to my favorite childhood haunts and playing in the Jardins du Luxembourg. We would stay at the Ritz where they were wonderful to my children, they gave all of them matching pink terry cloth robes, and all nine of them would line up in their robes and eat crepes from room service.
What is your favorite place in Paris to visit? Are there any spots you love returning to?
For sheer shopping indulgence, I love the Avenue Montaigne and the Faubourg St. Honore. Shopping at its VERY best!!! It doesn’t get better than that, in any city. The sky over Paris is my favorite sight in Paris, it is exquisite at all times.
And I love returning to the 7th arrondissement where I lived, with beautiful 18th-century houses, and the Rodin Museum, which has a lovely garden.
After living in multiple places, are there any cultural aspects that seem uniquely Parisian that you’re proud of?
The cultural aspect of French life I am most proud of was being decorated with the Legion of Honor, and earlier with the Decoration of the Order of Arts and Letters.
How has your perception of Paris changed as you’ve gotten older?
If anything, I appreciate France more, and Paris in particular, as I get older, because there is a remarkable constancy to it, and stability. The same important monuments remain, things last for centuries. The important landmarks of my childhood are still there, even the same restaurants. The sense of history is very strong. Very little has changed in my lifetime, which is very rare, very comforting, and very precious.
Where is home to you?
My heart has always been divided between France and the US, because I grew up in both places, both cultures, and both languages. I love both. I have come back full circle to France. My heart is divided, but I have learned in my life that one’s heart is big enough to love nine children equally, so it’s not surprising to me that one can love two countries as well.
And if you go to France, enjoy every minute of it, savor it, feel its history, its strength, and its tenderness, and embrace it. It will embrace you in return!!! And remember to look up at the beautiful sky!!! Â
Love, Danielle
Thank you Danielle! Discover her novels as well as more books, from mysteries to memoirs, set in Paris!
