The Monuments of Paris

A remarkable novel drawn from life about a Frenchwoman’s efforts to come to terms with the legacy of her father and grandfather, both powerful forces who left a mark on their country’s culture but whose incorrigible womanizing also left a complex mark on their wives and children. Violaine Huisman grew up in Paris with her beautiful, often hospitalized, manic-depressive mother—the subject of Huisman's acclaimed debut novel The Book of Mother —and her iconoclastic, flamboyant, Balzacian character