The Paris Novel

“After all, motherhood was one of the few failures of her life—and it was certainly not her fault that her child was such a dud. She gave Stella a home and kept her fed and clothed. What was her reward? An ungrateful little girl who did not exert the smallest effort to live up to her standards.”

The early part of Chapter 3 marks the only time that Reichl shifts the narrative’s close third-person point of view away from Stella’s, offering a glimpse at Celia’s detached and neglectful approach to parenting. Switching to Celia’s point of view at this moment allows the author to more impactfully convey the sense of disdain and disappointment that Celia feels toward her daughter.

“[The shopkeeper] bent and held the shoe out. ‘My gift to you.’ It fit perfectly. […] ‘Comme Cendrillon,’ murmured the woman as Stella slipped it on. Cinderella.”

Reichl’s direct allusion to Cinderella, in addition to the narrative parallel of Stella feeling like a different person upon putting on the dress, adds to the fairy-tale structure of the story—a girl who’s suffered abuse, a sudden fortune, and a series of fated chance encounters that lead her to her dream life. In this scene, the shopkeeper acts as a fairy godmother character, facilitating Stella’s transformation from her usual cautious self into a truer and bolder version of herself. That both the dress and the shoe fit perfectly enhance the whimsical tone of this moment.

“It was warm in here, and the first swallow of Chablis was deeply, shockingly cold: She thought of melting snow rushing down a mountainside as she took another sip and then another, holding the chilled wine in her mouth until it grew warm enough to swallow.”

This scene—the first time Stella truly enjoys a meal—provides an early example of how Reichl engages all the senses in her descriptions of food and drink. Despite her past insistence that she does not care much about food, Stella is shown to have a vivid imagination as she evokes vivid imagery to describe the taste of the food.

“Is this, she wondered, what life is like for other people? Or would they find this unanticipated encounter as exciting as she did? Nothing about this day had been ordinary, and she found herself looking forward to whatever was going to happen next. It was an unfamiliar sensation.”

As her arc progresses, Stella finds herself opening up to new experiences, starting with the food and then the conversation with Jules. Her internal monologue emphasizes how unfamiliar and strange the situation is. In comparing herself to others and wondering “what life is like for other people,” she starts to shed her isolation and open herself up to others.

“The soft, smooth substance filled her mouth. Chocolate cream, she thought. The flavor grew richer, rounder, louder with each passing second. It was like music, the notes lingering in her mind long after the sound itself had vanished.”

Here, Reichl uses the metaphor of music to describe Stella’s first taste of foie gras, which conjures up intense physical sensations that linger in her like a song. The sensory language that Reichl uses conveys the sense that Stella’s passion for food awakens all her senses—not only taste but also touch and sound—unique descriptors that help convey the intensity of the experience.

“Alarm bells sounded. And just like that, sensible Stella was back, staring at the glass in her hand. She glanced across the table and saw a stranger sitting there. Jules suddenly reminded her of Mortimer. She felt ill.”

Reichl uses a shift in cadence to represent the way in which Stella’s past trauma is triggered by Jules’s suggestion that they spend the night at his chateau. Lush, poetic descriptions are abruptly punctuated by these clipped, straightforward phrases, symbolizing a sudden return to reality as Stella’s fears and anxiety resurface.

“Stella hugged the words to herself, picturing a future in which she became a regular, eating here night after night. Why not? She thought back to all those pathetic meals in anonymous restaurants. Why had she wasted so much time?”

The imagery of Stella “hugging” the words of the chef at Robert et Louise conveys her sense of happiness, comfort, and security when she imagines eating there regularly. Her ability to visualize herself becoming part of a community, in contrast to the “anonymous” restaurants in New York where she ate alone, signals the beginnings of her journey of Self-Discovery Through Food and Art.

“It was more than this, she knew it. It had to do with Celia somehow and the way she had erased the real Stella to create a daughter more to her liking.”

Stella unpacks her mother’s treatment of her and how it has obscured her true self, highlighting the novel’s thematic engagement with The Relationship Between Family and Personal Identity. In this scene, Stella directly connects her desire to find Victorine’s paintings with her desire to uncover her own identity, explicitly recognizing the ways in which her relationship with Celia obstructed it.

“‘They must have been cold in the winter and hot in summer.’ She was whispering. ‘Haunted by hunger. Worked to the bone. Tormented by insects—fleas, lice, mosquitos. How easy they must have been to seduce! So much pain, so little joy.’ [Jules] looked at her. She realized that, but for the physical details, she might have been describing herself and that Jules knew it too. So much pain, so little joy.”

As Jules and Stella visit the cathedral in Vezelay, Reichl emphasizes the ways in which the safety that Stella experiences with Jules allows her to identify the lack in her life and how much she has limited herself. Jules’s recognition that she’s talking not about the 12th-century peasants who would have visited the cathedral centuries ago but about herself represents a moment of unspoken understanding between the two of them. Reichl repeats the phrase “so much pain, so little joy” to highlight the parallel that Stella draws, underscoring The Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma.

“‘That music…’ She struggled for words. ‘It filled me with awe. Something so simple. It makes me hungry for the world.’ She blushed and said, ‘I know I’m babbling. But I feel as if the world is filled with music I have never heard. I wonder what else I am missing?’”

This moment represents Stella’s changing mindset; she is becoming more open to new experiences and realizing how much she has denied herself in her life. Her description of the world being “full of music [she] has never heard” shows her growing curiosity, in contrast to her initial wariness and timidity, marking a shift in her character development.

“Simultaneously annoyed, flattered, and intrigued, she considered her options. She could refuse, of course, but hadn’t she promised herself to be more spontaneous? Wasn’t she trying to conquer her fears? Would Victorine refuse this adventure? Stella squared her shoulders, pocketed the money, and walked out the door.”

Reichl places her protagonist in a situation where her schedule and plans for her day are interrupted, placing her at an emotional crossroads. Stella’s decision to accept George’s errands demonstrates her increasing willingness to loosen her rigid plans and remain open to the unexpected. She draws on the self-confident image of Victorine to give her courage.

“‘She tried so hard. She wanted to be a painter and overcame incredible odds to do it. And then, just because she was poor and a woman, they took it all away from her. They trashed her work and rewrote her history until there’s nothing left but images made by men. It’s the ultimate humiliation. I want to give her back her own story.’ Thinking of all the ways Celia appropriated hers, she looked up at [George]. ‘Does that sound completely ridiculous?’”

Stella’s quest to learn more about Victorine mirrors her own journey toward self-discovery. Reichl draws direct parallels between the men who rewrote Victorine’s story and spoke poorly of her and her own mother’s attempts to belittle her and mold her into the daughter she envisioned. Her final question to George evidences her continued uncertainty and tendency toward self-doubt.

“In her search for Victorine, she had conjured up a strong, victorious woman who had overcome the odds. But what if she was wrong? What if the portrait was haggard, vapid, or fearful? For the first time it occurred to her that she might not like what she found.”

Reichl’s narrative indicates that the search for Victorine’s portrait has become deeply personal to Stella. She relies on Victorine as a symbol of feminine strength and confidence; thus, she fears that the portrait will not live up to the idealized image that she has of her. Given how invested she’s become in the search for the painting as an analogue for her own growth, a depiction of Victorine looking “haggard, vapid, or fearful” would feel like a personal blow.

“That life terrified me. My mother was absolutely fearless, and I thought everyone was like her, that I was the only one who saw hidden menaces everywhere.”

Reichl positions Stella’s tendency to define herself in opposition to her mother as a manifestation of her prolonged fears and shame stemming from her childhood trauma. Not only does she feel anxious, but she also feels alone in her anxiety. The contrast between her feeling “terrified” and her mother being “fearless” emphasizes the isolation that Stella feels as she begins to step outside of the self-protective limits that she’s placed on her life.

“I think that if you do not take this chance, you will regret it later. I did not have the easiest relationship with my father, but at least I know who he was. And that knowledge makes me understand myself better.”

Jules’s gentle encouragement makes explicit The Relationship Between Family and Personal Identity, sharing his own experience as evidence.

“Patrick and Baldwin both found pleasure in the kitchen, but for Olney, cooking was much more than that. It seemed that he didn’t just enjoy cooking; he was totally absorbed in it. It must be, she thought, the way he painted, and she understood that he had simply traded his brush for a knife.”

Throughout the novel, Reichl explores the way that food is celebrated as an art form in France, frequently drawing parallels between the culinary and visual arts. For Richard Olney, an American artist-turned-chef, the two are directly linked. The description of Richard “trad[ing] his brush for a knife” conveys a seamless transition between painting and cooking.

“For just a moment she imagined how it would have felt to be a little girl playing in this closet, knowing that someday, when you were grown, this would all belong to you.”

Reichl nuances the novel’s thematic interest in The Relationship Between Family and Personal Identity through the father-daughter bond between Jules and Stella and the gift of Jules’s late wife’s clothing. The inheritance of Séverine’s wardrobe represents Stella’s symbolic “adoption” into Jules’s family.

“Returning with the books, Stella strained to identify the feelings that were surging through her, analyzing each emotion as if it were a flavor. She was still annoyed about the devious way George had engineered her visit to Richard, but that sensation was muted by other feelings. Anticipation, she decided, mixed with ordinary irritation, a pinch of guilt, and a great dollop of reassurance. She wondered if this was how most people felt when they came home.”

Stella uses the metaphor of tasting flavors in food to describe her feelings. She applies the same meticulous intensity to her emotional landscape that she uses when eating, demonstrating the ways her passion for food is helping her to understand herself. She recognizes that her feelings are a mix of positive and negative, a complexity that she identifies with her new sense of familial belonging. The “great dollop of reassurance” overshadows the “ordinary irritation” and “pinch of guilt,” pointing to her newfound comfort as a part of a community.

“She had strayed so far from the life she’d once known that she was able to take each day as it unfolded […] When she thought about her life in New York—the dreary apartment she hadn’t lived in for months, the shabby bodega on the corner, the supermarket reeking of bug spray—she understood that it no longer felt like home.”

This perspective on Stella’s life in New York City provides a marked contrast to the comfort she felt in her quiet, rigidly scheduled existence in early chapters of the novel, demonstrating her personal growth. Her previous life now seems dreary in comparison to her experiences in Paris, a highly drastic change in perception. Whereas she was once reluctant to come to Paris, now she is reluctant to leave it.

“She could not take her eyes from Victorine’s face. As Olympia, Victorine had been a naked teenager staring defiantly out at the world, daring people to judge her. But this Victorine was a grown woman who had moved beyond that; her own opinion was all that mattered to her now. She had invented herself and she knew her own worth.”

Reichl’s narrative suggests that the moment when Stella finds Victorine’s self-portrait affirms her own growth and confidence. The author draws a distinction between the young Victorine as she posed for Olympia and the mature Victorine who has painted her own portrait and “invented herself,” mirroring Stella’s coming-of-age journey to shed her own self-doubt and affirm her own worth.

“When I think of the battles [Victorine] fought to become the person she wanted to be, it makes me ashamed of my fears. This may be the only chance I’ll ever have to meet my father, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life regretting that I was too cowardly to take it.”

Reichl continues to draw comparisons between Stella and Victorine, emphasizing the inspiration that her protagonist takes from the painter’s story. That she is “ashamed” of her fears, though, shows that she still shows a tendency to shame or berate herself, but the fact that she is conscious of how her own fears have limited her shows her growth since her arrival in Paris.

“What Celia wanted most was to be admired. Adored. She considered life a competition, and she would have hated having a child who preferred the other parent. Knowing you were irresistible, she simply made you disappear.”

In the final section of the novel, Stella begins to make peace with her mother’s memory through her relationship with her biological father. Getting to know Django provides her with a new perspective on her fraught dynamic with Celia, clarifying her reasons for denying Stella a connection to her father.

“And every morning, just before she woke, Stella was a little girl again, facing a mountain of dirty dishes in her mother’s kitchen. When Celia came in, as she always did, she uttered a single sentence: You have no father, you silly child. Whatever made you think you did?”

Cooking with Django triggers painful memories for Stella, bringing The Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma to the fore. The image of Stella as “a little girl again” signals vulnerability, showing that she is not completely past her lingering fears that stem from childhood.