It's Not Love, It's Just Paris - Hardcover

PRAISE FOR IT'S NOT LOVE, IT'S JUST PARIS: "'We'll always have Paris, ' lovers of this glorious city have been saying this to each other ever since Humphrey Bogart uttered those words in Casablanca. We rediscover a modern and eclectic Paris in Patricia Engel's astonishing first novel, a story as grand and dazzling as its setting, yet as intimate and powerful as a love story that just won't quit." --Edwidge Danticat "Wise and accomplished...Beautifully written and executed...There are at least two ways to judge a novel: by how fast you turn the pages or by how many times you have to stop to underline a passage. My copy of It's Not Love, It's Just Paris is all marked up. Engel, whose first book was the acclaimed story collection Vida, has uncanny insight into the human condition. Through Lita, she speaks a profound language of young love and desire...Engel's considerable gifts are on display here."--Benjamin Saenz, The New York Times Book Review "Spare prose laced with nuggets of genuine wisdom...it is a testament to [Engel's] large talent that the story culminates with an emotional force that is both surprising and deeply affecting."--Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle "Absorbing... intimate in scope, erotic and, by the end, entirely unexpected.... Engel she has an eye for detail. She knows how to drown the reader in a sense of enchantment... She writes exquisite moments... The power of this excellent novel is in how Engel holds us in her thrall as she complicates where Lita is going and what she will leave behind. The heart this story breaks, might be your own."--Roxanne Gay, The Nation "Like any word whose shimmer has dulled from overuse, Paris can seem like a clich in itself. . . . But early on Patricia Engel...shows that her writing can still be original. . . . [Engel's] fresh language leads us right into the middle of yet another love story in Paris, and a star-crossed one to boot. But by the time you get there, you may already be hooked and feeling weepy for these two young lovers."--The New York Times "A post-American Dream tale."--Jose Manuel Simian, New York Daily News "Remarkable, razor-sharp...A compassionate read." -Booklist(starred review) "A timeless tale." -Library Journal "Engel approaches her love affair without florid prose or salacious encounters. Instead, she installs her shy, serious protagonist, Lita del Cielo, in a Parisian boarding house . . . lets her slowly fall for the quiet son of an infamous politician, and pits her new life abroad against her old one at home in the U.S. It's heady and cool approach brings real substance to the summer fling while making it an antidote to the usual seasonal fluff."--Time Out New York (Summer Reads List) "Has an appealing fairy tale quality . . . Engel has a knack for showing how Paris's charms are both real and always verging on cliche."--Publishers Weekly "As a coming-of-age novel, It's Not Love, It's Just Paris might sound as if its theme is rather well-trod, but the title puts you on notice. This is no saccharine tale of awakening. Rather, it's a clear-eyed recasting of a classic storyline executed with confidence and just enough city-of-lights magic by Miami author Patricia Engel to conjure up something that manages to be familiar and new. This is a novel to get lost in."Miami Herald "Unpredictable and touching . . . Warm, quirky and intelligently observed. A bonus is [Engel's] wonderful evocation of Paris -- if you haven't been lucky enough to spend a year learning to love that glorious city (or if you have and want a vivid reminder), this bright and charming novel is the next best thing to a visit."-Tampa Bay Times "The number one reason you need to read this novel is to experience Engel's writing. It's Not Love, It's Just Paris is wry, melancholy, enchanting, seductive, and downright delectable. I savored every single page." -BookRiot "This story is not only for those who have been to Paris, but also for those who have ever felt like outcasts and hoped for a haven. The writing is honest, the characters real, and the ending not-so-predictable. For anyone who has ever been to Paris or has ever suffered in love, It's Not Love, It's Just Paris is about finding a home away from home, finding yourself, and finding amongst all the distractions of obligation where your true passions reside." -The Thursday Review "Lots of readers have wanted to know what Engel would write after her arresting debut, Vida, a PEN/Hemingway finalist. And here it is, an enticingly written work."-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal PRAISE FOR VIDA: "Gloriously gifted and alarmingly intelligent Engel writes with an almost fable-like intensity, whether she is describing suburban New Jersey or urban Colombia or some other lost place . . . her ability to pierce the hearts of her crazy-ass characters, to fracture a moment into its elementary particles of yearning, cruelty, love and confusion will leave you breathless. Here, friends, is the debut I have been waiting for." --Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao "The stories in Patricia Engel's striking debut collection are like snapshots from someone's photo album: glimpses of relatives, friends, lovers and acquaintances, sometimes posing, sometimes caught by the camera unawares. . . . [Engel] delineates Sabina's efforts to articulate an identity of her own with unsparing psychological precision. . . . What makes Sabina's coming-of-age story so compelling is the arresting voice Ms. Engel has fashioned for her: a voice that's immediate, unsentimental and disarmingly direct." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "[An] arresting and vibrant new voice . . . Unforgettable." --Elissa Schappel, Vanity Fair "Arresting . . . Vivid and revealing . . . A tingle of recognition builds as detail after detail sings with the veracity of real life." --Sophia Lear, The New York Times Book Review "Impressive . . . Unsentimental . . . [With] chiseled prose (precise and unforgiving as a boxer's jab) and [a] tender knowledge that yearning for meaning sometimes breathes under the thickest hides."--Oscar Villalon, NPR.org "[A] mesmerizing debut." --Ana Veciana-Suarez, Miami Herald "You won't forget Sabina, the troubled, mouthy young Colombian-American woman at the heart of Patricia Engel's debut collection. . . . Vida feels like shards of memory. As if all that is left when things blow up--as they always do for Sabina--are these beautiful pieces." --John Freeman, NPR.org ("Best Book Debuts of 2010") "Every story glistens as it follows Sabina through Miami, Colombia, New Jersey, and New York City on her way to understanding and enlightenment in a violent, ugly, and stunning portrait of an American experience."--Joe Lapin, LA Weekly (Best Books of the Year) "Pitch-perfect . . . Intense . . . [A] great debut . . . For me, reading Patricia Engel's Vida was a little like looking at a Lichtenstein. It reminded me of standing in the gallery of a breathless museum, atop creaky hardwood floors, observing forceful dots of color making a starkly beautiful painting--all the while I registered that sentimental love was something sweet, but inescapably counterfeit. . . . Engel has managed a complex portrayal of both wanting to believe in love while remaining darkly mocking of it. . . . Leveled with charm and muted nostalgia, Sabina's frank, swindling countenance is powerfully disarming." --Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Bookslut "A narrative exploration of how far a person can run before accepting that she can't get away from herself . . . Engel has constructed such a solid and sympathetic central character. Fiction tends to like its women breakable, but Sabina doesn't break, and the narrative voice doesn't flinch." --Danielle Evans, NPR.org ("The Year's Best Outsider Fiction") "Engel has an eye for the details of youth . . . [Her] impressive sensitivity to such nuances is what animates Vida . . . the literary equivalent of interacting with someone who maintains unceasing eye contact--compelling, impressive and a little unnerving. But the book is funny, too, in that same direct way. . . . It's hard to conceive of a reader who wouldn't find pleasure in Ms. Engel's humor and intelligence." --The Economist (online) "Terrific debut . . . Vida is rich with life. Sabina's story is one of millions of threads of the immigrant experience, but it is universal as well: We all search for our place in the world, for the one who can make us visible."--Colette Bancroft, St. Petersburg Times "What Engel captures so acutely is the vast cultural inner-life of second-generation Americans . . . . [Written with] lovely, heartbreaking subtlety." --Bret McCabe, Baltimore City Paper "Vida calls to mind some of the best fiction from recent years. Like Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, Engel uses stories about connected characters to illuminate her main subject, in this case Sabina, who moves with her family from Bogot , Colombia, to New Jersey. Engel brings Sabina's family and culture to life with a narrative style reminiscent of Junot D az's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. . . . [A] vivid, memorable and an exceptionally promising debut." --Vikas Turakhia, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) "Engel navigates issues of class, ethnicity, and identity with finesse . . . [Her] prose is refreshingly devoid of pomp and puts a hard focus on the stiff compromises Sabina and her family have had to accept; there's a striking perspective to these stories." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "There's no baloney in Patricia Engel's stories, no falseness or posturing. Young women fall in love, and lose their way, as they actually do in life, in every heartbreaking register. The remarkable portrait of immigrant life is not a 'literary' portrait or a multicultural cliche, it is unsentimental, unsparing, and true. Vida is a unique and unforgettable book." --Francisco Goldman, author of The Divine Husband "A striking debut . . . Engel explores timely questions of community versus personal identity, offers striking observations on the restrictions of class and race, and does it all in a voice that is free of artifice and effort. . . . Rendered with precision and absolute honesty, these stories are quiet and deep, a function of Engel's clear, direct prose, which is devoid of frills and accouterments."--Debra Ginsberg, Shelf Awareness "Direct and unsentimental . . . [Vida] doesn't disappoint." --Susan G. Cole, NOW (Toronto) "[Written with] impressive sensitivity . . . it's hard to conceive of a reader who wouldn't find pleasure in Engel's humor and intelligence." --Molly Young, More Intelligent Life (The Economist blog) "[Sabina's] voice is so achingly real, it haunts the reader long after the last page is turned. Funny and passionate, yet also fearless, Vida is a beautifully crafted piece that reminds us why fiction is important." --Susan Falco, Gulf Stream (online) "Between the pop culture and politics of our time, we have become accustomed to language that does not clarify, but clouds. This is why Patricia Engel's work, with its taut focus, its pained illumination, is so important. In Vida, as much as we come to know her narrator, Sabina, we come to know more fully the inside of our own hearts." --Asha Bandele, author of The Prisoner's Wife "Patricia Engel's Vida is that rare thing: a beautifully crafted book that truly has a story to tell. Brutal in its emotional honesty, graceful in its delivery, Vida signals the arrival of a new literary star." --Mat Johnson, author of Drop and Hunting in Harlem "Patricia Engel writes with a passion, yearning and care, crafting narratives and characters that are so real, you know them, have always known them. Pitch perfect, at once restrained and lush, intelligent, funny and dripping with melancholy, Vida marks the debut of a truly original voice." --Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames "Vida is emotional and elegant, a look at life through the wise eyes and fine prose of a remarkably talented writer." --Uzodinma Iweala, author of Beasts of No Nation

Patricia Engel's collection of stories, Vida, quickly established her as one of our country's best young writers, winning praise from Junot D az, Uzodinma Iweala, Francisco Goldman, and others. Her first novel is a vibrant and wistful narrative about an American girl abroad in Paris, who navigates the intoxicating and treacherous complexities of independence, friendship, and romance. Lita del Cielo, the daughter of two Colombian orphans who arrived in America with nothing and made a fortune with their Latin food empire, has been granted one year to pursue her studies in Paris before returning to work in the family business. She moves into a gently crumbling Left Bank mansion known as "The House of Stars," where a spirited but bedridden Countess S raphine rents out rooms to young women visiting Paris to work, study, and, unofficially, to find love. Cautious and guarded, Lita keeps a cool distance from the other girls, who seem at once boldly adult and impulsively na ve, who both intimidate and fascinate her. Then Lita meets Cato, and the contours of her world shift. Charming, enigmatic, and weak with illness, Cato is the son of a notorious right-wing politician. As Cato and Lita retreat to their own world, they soon find it difficult to keep the outside world from closing in on theirs. Ultimately Lita must decide whether to stay in France with Cato or return home to fulfill her immigrant family's dreams for her future. It's Not Love, It's Just Paris is a spellbinding love story, a portrait of a Paris caught between old world grandeur and the international greenblood elite, and an exploration of one woman's journey to distinguish honesty from artifice and lay claim to her own life.