Don't Forget to be Happy
Publisher
:
Albin Michel
Parution date
:
2009
EAN
:
9782226188748
Number of pages
:
217
Description
How do we give our values to our children? Can the value of happiness be passed on to the next generation? With humor, and in a novel rich in personalities, the author helps her children understand the importance of being happy with one’s life. To do so, she invents Marie-Lila, whose father, before he died, told her, “N’oublie pas d’être heureuse.”
Marie-Lila, as a child, looks out her bedroom window and sees the coast of Morocco. The ocean view is spectacular . . . but it doesn’t make her happy. What would make her happy, she believes, is a view of the city of her dreams—a view of Paris.
The Paris she longs for is the Paris of her mother’s cousin Fifi. Each time Fifi arrives for one of her frequent visits, she brings a suitcase full of gifts for her little cousin—wonderful gifts, even lingerie—from glorious Paris. She also brings an endless stream of stories about the city and advice that Marie-Lila takes to heart.
“Only if you are thin and live in Paris,” Fifi tells her, “will you attain nirvana.” Finally, after years of dreaming herself there, she moves to Paris to live with Fifi. But the Fifi she lives with is not the Fifi she thought she knew, a Fifi who was “tout Paris.” Instead she is a middle-aged homebody, uninterested in social life. Marie-Lila, however, still dreams of the snobbish high life Fifi had told her about when she was a child. She becomes involved with a young aristocrat, heir to a fortune but weighed down by family obligations.
In this lyrical novel, self-acceptance and a deeper understanding of life slowly evolve. Marie-Lila realizes that she is no snob and that even if one is thin and living in Paris, nirvana—the highest happiness—does not come by denying one’s true self.
Author
Christine Orban : Christine Orban grew up in Casablanca and is now a journalist as well as the author of a number of previous novels, including N’oublie pas d’être heureuse (Albin Michel 2009) and La mélancholie du Dimanche (Albin Michel, 2004). A memoir, One Day My Sister Disappeared, was published in English by Random House in 2004 and in Random House trade paperback in 2005.
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