In Paris With You

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Language is a powerful thing. I can't even articulate how wonderful this love story portrayed fallible human nature stumbling over itself to express our weak desires, but this book does exactly that. Absolutely adorable!

I was excited to read this book because of the blurb and the format (a story about lost love and having second chances). With that said, if someone enjoys reading a story in verse and they enjoy romance, I think they will probably enjoy this story. It wasn't a bad story and the characters were okay. Although, I was not very attached to them. That could again be from my disdain at reading in verse. I just never really felt a connection to any of the characters. The reason I came across it was because I’ve been trying to find books, YA books that is, that are not set within the US. And I somehow found this. Which was originally written in French and oh so amazingly translated to English. It’s poetic so of course it’s beautiful. And of course it speaks to your soul. And it rhymes?!!!! The translator is brilliant! Repeated use of colloquial languagr suggesting informality and honesty. Phrases make poem seem down to earth. Such language contrasts with falsely poetic tone often found in literature about love, replacing to comic effect. Such a sweet satisfying story of love and loss... both Tatiana and Eugene were likable and a little quirky.... The story really transported you to Paris, you could see the sights, hear the sounds, and smell the scents of the city... a cleverly told love story... I’m not sure I could read every book in verse, but it was nice for a little change of pace...These engaging, varied, and informative lessons have been designed to help students gain a valuable understanding of the content, language, and structure features of a range of Love and Relationships poems. Each of the poems are widely studied, with some being from the Literary Heritage bank, and most being fixtures in examination board anthologies:

The third and fourth stanzas are very interesting. The speaker asks if it is possible to miss the tour of Paris including the most famous landmarks (Notre Dame etc) and stay in the 'sleazy hotel room' instead. One reading would suggest that this is a wonderfully romantic gesture with the lovers staying in bed rather than going on a sightseeing tour. However, the word 'sleazy' bothers me as I'm not convinced that the speaker is being ironic and making a joke about staying bed for more "sleazy" purposes. The two stanzas flow into one another using enjambment to show that this thought process is taking place in the same moment. The poet establishes the setting of a 'sleazy' hotel room which contrasts nicely with what a reader would usually expect of a love poem taking place in Paris. My impression is that the poet and the speaker are trying to be purposefully ambiguous (no obvious meaning). The scene it meant to be a little bit sleazy and a little bit romantic, which befits the idea of a person throwing themselves into a new relationship when the wounds of the last one have not yet healed. These people are only just getting to know each other and 'learn' about each other and what they are. The word 'what' suggests that the speaker isn't sure what is going on and what his or her role in all this actually is. The line 'doing this and that' is an awkward phrase that refers to them having sex, but why dress it in such an awkward way? Does this imply that the speaker is a little ashamed by what's going on, or is it just a playful joke about having some naughty sex in a sleazy hotel room in Paris? It isn't clear and it isn't meant to be, after all love, passion and even brief encounters are exciting yet extremely complex and confusing experiences. Even though the book starts in the present, a good half of the book occurs 10 years before. The novel is all about first teenage love and speaks to everyone who has ever been in love. Ten years later Eugene and Tatiana meet again, and suddenly Eugene understands what he lost so many years ago and what might slip again through his fingers if he doesn't grip this second chance with both hands. Students will vital skills in: interpreting the significant meanings poems, understanding the writer's ideas within poems, understanding the social and historical contexts of poems, and analysing features of content, language, and structure.

One way in which the poets present their ideas about the pain of love is through their use of imagery with their poems. For example, they both use metaphors about being ‘wounded’. Fenton’s line ‘I’m one of your talking wounded’ adopts a pun which relates to the expression ‘walking wounded’, used by soldiers to imply resilience. He feels as though love has previously ‘wounded’ him, if not actually finished him off. Similarly, continuing with the theme of violence, Duffy uses an extended metaphor throughout the whole poem which presents the break-up of her relationship as a gunfight in a Western movie. Lexis such as ‘trigger’, ‘silver bullets’, ‘wide of the mark’ and ‘blast me’ presents the effect of breaking up as wounding her physically. My favorite character by a mile is Tatiana! She's raw and her personality is great in this book. However, the love interest Eugene is kind of a jerk. He's not interesting, he's just boring and rude. The story took you from the characters during their teenage years to the current time with the characters. The love story wasn't too far fetched, but I really didn't care for the ending too much. I like my romances to have a happy ending and this one was just, eh.. whatever, for me. Je l'avais emprunté un peu par hasard, j'avais vu quelques bons avis, et puis je m'étais rendu compte qu'il s'agissait d'un roman en vers. N'étant pas sure de l'apprécier, je l'avais donc mit un peu de côté. Individually, these resources are worth more than double the price of the bundle, meaning that you can make a considerable saving!

This book is an easy read and a fairly entertaining one. It started off so well, light, playful tone in the writing whose silliness made it hard to put this book down. But then it brings up an unexpected storyline which simply doesn't go with the tone that the book is written in. The biggest influence this storyline has on the rest of the events in the book is that it makes the characters suddenly unlikeable, it simply puts one off reading the rest. Tatiana, a fourteen-year-old at the time of Lensky's suicide, brings up the event with ease as if it's unfinished business between her and Eugene and shows no compassion for him , Eugene was there and saw it happen. Eugene on the other hand, who was seventeen when it happened, shows an unbelievable amount of coldness about it - no emotion whatsoever. The actual thing that stands between them, Eugene's initial rejection, when he was seventeen and Tatiana was fourteen, is taken as the more serious matter at hand. Tatiana takes it so seriously, forgetting that they were both teenagers when it took place and she just doesn't let it go, which makes me wonder about whether or not any maturing took place on her part in the ten years since this happened. Surprisingly, and despite his ongoing numbness (which I suppose is due to the symptoms of depression he shows quite a bit of throughout the read), Eugene is the one who's developed and matured over the years. But I am in Paris with you.’The anticlimax is deliberately flat in tone. The romance of Paris and the intimacy of the second person pronoun ‘you’ is bathetic due to the qualification of the preposition ‘ But’. This is a compromise and compromising relationship. There is no romantic idealism or excitement here… i am also an absolute IDIOT, because when i entered the giveaway for this book (thanks goodreads giveaways!) i did not notice it was poetry. i would not have entered if i knew it was poetry. Overall, I love In Paris With You! It is not your typical romance book. I highly recommend it if you love contemporary books! This lesson enables students to build their knowledge of the content, language, and structure of James Fenton’s modern relationships poem ‘In Paris With You.’ In particular, students learn how word play, colloquial language, rhyme, and poetic structure can influence the mood and tone of a poem.