Description

A love letter to Paris written in iPhone notes and in the troubling intimacy of public transport post-Charlie Hebdo attacks, Lauren Elkin’s diary of a year on a Parisian bus pays homage to Georges Perec and Annie Ernaux. In this chronicle of the ordinary makings of a city and its people, the author’s own body is a threatened vessel; that of the author as a woman as an author as a pregnant woman on the bus.

Publisher Review

Praise for No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute; 'Lauren Elkin's commuter buses comprise a world where all existential concerns are present - the embodied self, the individual in society, and the bond of casual community. Within this constrained world Elkin observes and dramatizes "the morning thumb ballet of checking all the things I check on my phone" while confronting all that it means to be human.'- Sarah Manguso; Praise for Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London; 'An uplifting, gender-bending critique of how women negotiate public space' - Deborah Levy, Guardian, Book of the Year; 'a rich, intelligent and lively meander through cultural history, biography, literary criticism, urban topography and memoir' - Lucy Scholes, Observer; 'Flaneuse is not simply a reclaiming of space, but also of a suppressed intellectual and cultural history.' - Financial Times; 'The thoughtful urban stroller Lauren Elkin is a self-appointed heir to Woolf's 'street haunter.' - Gaby Wood, Daily Telegraph; 'An intense meditation on what it means to be a woman and walk out in the world.' - Erica Wagner, New Statesman