Reading list

Best English-Language Narrative Nonfiction of 2019

by Miriam Bridenne | January 2, 2020

If you, like us, can’t help but wonder about the domestic lives of geniuses, then Françoise Gilot’s Life with Picasso and Deirdre Bair’s Parisian Lives are just what you need for this last holiday weekend!

Reading List

Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot and Lisa Alther

Far from being a resentful and bitter account of a rocky conjugal life, Life with Picasso is an astute description of the author’s ten frantic and extraordinary years with the artist: a time not just full of exceptional people, surprises, and creativity; but also rich in political activism, love, and tenderness. A wonderful foray into the art world of the time, its pages offer an abundance of scintillating anecdotes about Matisse, Gertrude Stein, Eluard, Gide, Cocteau, Miró, and Chaplin– as well as a delicate and subtle portrait of Georges Braque.

Life with Picasso, Françoise Gilot and Lisa Alther, New York Review of Books

Parisian Lives by Deirdre Bair

National Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair explores her fifteen remarkable years in Paris with Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, painting intimate new portraits of two literary giants and revealing secrets of the biographical art.

Parisian Lives, Deirdre Bair, Doubleday

Miriam Bridenne
After almost two decades of working in publishing, and a few round trips between Paris and New York, Miriam has decided to settle down at Albertine to do what she enjoys most: recommending books she loves. Somehow this also includes taking bizarre pictures for Albertine's social media outlets.
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