Book Review: Flaneuse

Book: Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a “determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk.” Virginia Woolf called it “street haunting”; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffany’s; and Patti Smith did it in her own inimitable style in 1970s New York.

Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.

Called “deliciously spiky and seditious” by The Guardian, Flâneuse will inspire you to light out for the great cities yourself.



Rating: 1 star (Did Not Finish)

Review:

I wanted to read this book because I enjoy walking, being out in nature and observing the world around me. But this turned out to be a disappointing read, the description makes it seem as if the author was going to write about women and the inspiration they drew from living in the city and walking. As well as bring up how at one point only male writers and men of leisure wrote about walking. Due to social norms women didn't have the privilege to experience the freedom of being able to aimlessly wander or simply walk down the street unless they were accompanied by a chaperone of some sort. Because to do so otherwise would be seen in a negative way or give off a negative impression.

The author does get into that at the beginning of the book but from there the book turns into a boring yet well-written and sometimes pretentious look at history, women writers and their characters and a brief look at how walking has been incorporated into their works. The author also wrote about her life and travels and what she experienced living or visiting various city from New York to Tokyo but the writing never truly resonated with me because this book is so boring and uninspiring. I found myself having to reread passages I just read because I had a difficult time focusing on the material. I was so bored that I couldn't finish reading it.

I did not finish reading this because I found the book to be way too boring and it seemed to lose focus on what the book was supposed to be about. The author spent a lot of time going over history and books and less about women who enjoy walking throughout cities.

It's not completely boring there are some interesting historical tidbits but that doesn't make up for fact that this book doesn't even come close to what the description stated nor the subtitle.