• About
  • Contact

Paris Adieu

~ a coming of age tale by Rozsa Gaston

Paris Adieu

Tag Archives: France

Anne and Charles: Passion and Politics in Late Medieval France

08 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by rozsagaston in female rulers, French culture, girls, girls role model, History, Love, Relationships, Renaissance, role model, women

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anne de Bretagne, Anne of Brittany, avant la lettre feminist, book, Breton ruler, brittany queen, charles viii, de bretagne, duchess, France, Louis XII

Fine Wines Fine Quotes

Kirkus review blurbANNE AND CHARLES

Passion and Politics in Late Medieval France: The Story of Anne of Brittany’s Marriage to Charles VIII

Book One of the Anne of Brittany Series

by Rozsa Gaston

Publication date: Jan. 22, 2018
Publisher: Renaissance Editions
357 pps.
eBook, paperback, audiobook by Tantor Media coming spring 2018

A historically sharp and dramatically stirring love story. — Kirkus Reviews

A historical dramatization of the 15th-century marriage between Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII of France.

Upon the death of Anne’s father, Duke Francis II, she becomes the ruler of Brittany at the tender age of 11. Determined not to have her authority usurped by meddling advisers or foreign powers, she searches for a suitable husband whose allegiance will bring peace and security to Brittany. She’s offered protection—as well as condolences—by King Charles VIII of France, but she rejects his offer as an imperialist scheme to gain…

View original post 733 more words

Advertisement

Rozsa Gaston looks to her own life as genesis of new novel – Greenwich Post, May 23, 2014

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by rozsagaston in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

baby boomers, Black is Not a Color, book signing, boomer lit, Carcassonne, Doncaster Boutique, elder care, fiction, France, Greenwich authors, local authors, romance, Rozsa Gaston

Local author Gaston looks to her own life as genesis of new novel

By Ken Borsuk editor@greenwich-post.com on May 23, 2014 in Around Town, Community

Pictured by her home, Rozsa Gaston has used her own life as the small inspiration for a larger fictional tale. —Ken Borsuk

Many authors, when looking for subjects of the most emotional value, turn inward to their own lives as a jumping off point. And that’s just what Greenwich’s Rozsa Gaston has done in her latest novel.

highres_frontIn Black Is Not A Color (Unless Worn By A Blonde), Ms. Gaston writes of a young woman reconnecting with her father after many years of estrangement. In this story, Ava Fodor is a woman with a thriving career and a budding new romance who was not raised by her father only to find herself having to take care of him over the course of the final year of his life. Despite not knowing her father, and having all the resentment and confusion that comes with that, Ava finds herself drawn to the eccentric Transylvanian/Hungarian man with his passion and zest for life even as it slips away.

“It doesn’t start that way, but this is a book that ends up being about elder care,” Ms. Gaston told the Post in an interview last week. “That’s not a very sexy subject, but it is an extremely topical one and this is definitely a book for Baby Boomers to read and also for those younger than Baby Boomers who are going to be facing this down the line. This is about caring for an aging parent who didn’t raise you as a child. That changes the conversation. Her relationship with her father is she’s just discovering him for the first time as a 30-year-old woman and he’s from a completely different culture.”

Ms. Gaston indeed drew from her own relationship with her father for the book but only in a loose way. It might be the genesis for the story, but it quickly goes in its own direction.Zoltan Ivani - 1956 and 1964_crop

“My father was a Hungarian/Transylvanian refugee from the 1956 Hungarian uprising and I did not get to know him until I was older,” Ms. Gaston said. “I met him when I was about 16 and I wanted to work through feelings about our relationship. Writing the book ended up being a wonderful eye opener for me to realize how much my father actually did give me and how satisfying it was for me that when he did die I did the right thing. I might not have done the best job of doing the right thing, but I knew I did the right thing. I wanted to share that journey and writing this book allowed me to develop a deeper appreciation for my father.”

In the book, while Ava finds herself trying to relate to someone she doesn’t know and who comes from an entirely different cultural frame of mind than she has, she also has to struggle with the feelings of abandonment she has always had toward her father while finding herself drawn to him and his unique style. The more she learns about him the more she relates to her father which makes things even more difficult and that’s before life further complicates her romance…but to find out more you’re going to have to read the book which is available at Amazon.com and can also be ordered from Rozsagaston.com.

“The great thing about this book is that there’s progress between Ava and her father and the reason there’s progress is that her father is very forgiving,” Ms. Gaston said. “He didn’t parent her and she’s his only child so he didn’t parent anyone and he knows he was not a father at all. So he forgives her for whatever she says to him and how she acts toward him. He just wants to get to know her because he does love her and always has loved her.”

This book, which was first released in March, is a sequel to Paris Adieu, which had Ava living as an au pair coming of age in Paris. The romance between Ava and Pierre that began in the first book is a major theme in this new book. Ms. Gaston is quick to compare her lead character to widely known characters like Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City in that she’s no saint and can be a complicated person, but is someone readers want to root for.

“As soon as I finished Paris Adieu, I realized that Ava took on a life of her own and that I owed it to her to continue her story,” Ms. Gaston said. “And I owe it to her now to also continue her story through another book if not more.”

That book is still in the planning stages but Ms. Gaston is eager to get to work. A driven writer with several books to her name, Ms. Gaston said she loves to think ahead. Sense of Touch coverHer next book, Sense of Touch, is inspired by the famed The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries at the Cluny Museum in Paris. No one has ever definitively sourced who the women are in those tapestries, which date back to the 1490’s, and this story is a historical fiction exploring that mystery.

However that story might have to wait until 2015 as Ms. Gaston is planning on having her sequel to Black Is Not A Color done by the fall.

“I can’t stop and I don’t want to,” Ms. Gaston said. “The projects keep coming to me one after the other.”

But she will stop long enough to sign copies of her book this week. Tomorrow, May 23, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Doncaster pop up boutique at 219 East Putnam Avenue in Cos Cob, Ms. Gaston will be on hand for a book signing. More information is available at Rozsagaston.com.

Book signing 5-14-14

 

 

How Ava learned to eat well in France

13 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by rozsagaston in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

amazon, book club, eating right, fiction, food, food addiction, France, French, health, healthy food choices, kindle, nutrition, Paris, romance, travel, Victoria Kann

ImageWhen Ava arrived in Paris at age 19, she couldn’t walk past a pastry shop without going in. Fifteen pounds later, she decided she needed to take control of her food choices. It was a gradual process. Parisian women proved attractive role models to Ava, with their love of pleasure and careful attention to eating small quantities of delicious, high-quality food. They knew something Ava didn’t. It took her ten years to find out. You can find out faster by picking up Paris Adieu http://amzn.to/MLX194 and skipping directly to Chapter Seven.

Although she admired Parisian women from afar, she couldn’t study them at close quarters, because she didn’t know any. It was Ava’s British girlfriend, Charlotte, whose eating habits tripped the switch that put Ava on the right course to gaining mastery over how she ate and how much. The following scene is excerpted from Paris Adieu (chapter seven, beginning on p. 114):

We took our coffee at the counter, where Pascal introduced me to a new custom. I’d often wondered why eggs were Imagedisplayed on a vertical stand on Parisian café counter tops, especially in the mornings. Now, I watched as he plucked three eggs from the stand, peeled, and salted one then handed it to me. The hard-boiled egg was fresh and delicious.

My English girlfriend, Charlotte, came to mind. I’d met her in Tokyo, where I taught English the summer between sophomore and junior years. She was ten years older, wildly sophisticated, with a penchant for black American Japanese major league baseball players; a male genre which enjoyed superstar status in Japan. Pretty, tall, and willowy, her complexion was as delicate as an English rain shower.

Her eating habits had been as carefully controlled as her love life had not. She was discipline personified. I’d soaked up everything she did, worshiping at the altar of her self-control. Every morning, she’d eat either one hard-boiled or soft-boiled egg with a piece of unbuttered whole wheat toast. She’d wash this down with a few cups of tea. I never saw her vary from this routine once. After we’d parted ways in Tokyo, she came to Yale one spring to visit me. At breakfast in the chaos of my residential college dining hall, surrounded by undergraduates wolfing down doughnuts, bowls of granola, plates of pancakes, eggs and bacon, she maintained her strict regimen by carefully unpeeling her hard-boiled egg and toasting her lone piece of bread. My girlfriends and I were in awe.

A good number of the girls in my class were anywhere from five to fifteen pounds overweight, except for the ones who were anorexic, bulimic, or naturally slim. My female colleagues and I sucked in our breaths as Charlotte rose from the table after breakfasting, her stomach flat, hip bones jutting out fashionably under her thin, flowered dress, with long slim legs ending in ankles you could wrap your fingers around. Everything about her showed us up. After dark, she was capable of drinking like a fish, another British character trait my Yale colleagues and I found impressive.

As I stood at the counter, enjoying my salted, hard-boiled egg, I connected up the dots. Pascal was showing me how to do something Charlotte had known how to do her entire adult life: carefully control her blood sugar in the morning so she didn’t become enslaved to it for the rest of the day.

Finishing the egg, I washed it down with strong coffee with foaming milk in it. Suddenly the display case of flaky croissants farther down the counter had no power over me. If the counterman had slid it down to my end, taken off the top, and wafted the tray under my nose, I wouldn’t have flinched. My one hard-boiled egg with coffee was enough. For the first time in my life, I felt like a Frenchwoman.

Excerpted from Paris Adieu (2012) by Rozsa Gaston at http://amzn.to/MLX194

Find Paris Adieu and its sequel, Black is Not a Color, on Amazon Now

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,385 other subscribers

Latest Tweets

  • 𝗚𝗢𝗢𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗𝗦 𝗚𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗔𝗪𝗔𝗬 𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥𝗧 Jilted at age 11 by the king of France, Margaret of Austria went on to govern the Netherla… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 17 hours ago
  • Journey to the Renaissance for your winter reading pleasure. bit.ly/anneofbrittany… #historicalfiction #Booktwt… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 day ago
  • 𝗚𝗢𝗢𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗𝗦 𝗚𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗔𝗪𝗔𝗬 𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥𝗧 Jilted at age 11 by the king of France, Margaret of Austria went on to govern the Netherla… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 6 days ago
  • 𝘼𝙣𝙣𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙇𝙤𝙪𝙞𝙨 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝘽𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 becomes a 𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧 for the 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝘂𝗰𝗲𝗿 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀. chantireviews.com/2023/01/26/the…… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
  • 𝑨𝑵𝑵𝑬 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑳𝑶𝑼𝑰𝑺 𝑭𝑶𝑹𝑬𝑽𝑬𝑹 𝑩𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑫 makes the 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐒𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐒. bit.ly/anneandlouisfo… Award-winning… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 weeks ago
Follow @rozsagaston

Paris Adieu

Paris Adieu

Bring Up the Bodies

Archives

Blog Stats

  • 6,231 hits

https://soundcloud.com/audible/paris-adieu

  • About
  • Contact
  • About
  • Contact

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Paris Adieu
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Paris Adieu
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...