Talking Location With.. Nicole Kennedy – PARIS

27th July 2022

#TalkingLocationWith …. Nicole Kennedy, author of After Paris, set in PARIS

It’s fair to say that I’m a fully-fledged Francophile. I love the language (although I’m not very good at speaking it), the food (which I am very good at eating) and the variety of things to see and do, but mostly I’ve always hankered wistfully after the way French women look so cool and chic in a way which I would never have any hope of emulating.

For all these reasons I jumped at the opportunity to spend four months working in Paris while I was training as a solicitor. I lived in a little flat on Rue du Bac, beside the food hall of Le Bon Marché (akin to the Selfridges food hall), with three friends stationed in nearby flats, one of which – with its views over Le Bon Marché to the Eiffel Tower and beyond – inspired Nina’s flat in After Paris.

While none of the events of After Paris are real, the setting is inspired by my time there. My twenties are echoed in a rowdy bar in Oberkampf dancing to Brit Pop with visiting friends from university; in Sundays spent walking from my apartment to Le Jardin Du Luxembourg where families would assemble and play with boats on the lake. In many, many brunches (and Kir Royales) at Le Fumoir.

After my secondment I returned to Paris whenever I could. The French-Korean restaurant which Nina, Alice and Jules visit is inspired by a meal at Pierre Sang on my sister’s hen weekend, when the eponymous Sang introduced himself and gifted us wine. I meandered through Alice’s art galleries, lingered over macarons in Ladurée and stood with friends on the terrace of Restaurant Georges gazing out over the rooftops of Paris. After Paris is a tribute to friendship, but it is also a love letter to the city.

I conceived the idea for After Paris in 2017, when I was working on my first novel, Everything’s Perfect, but it was luck that I ended up writing it during the pandemic. It allowed me to travel, for small pockets of time, back to Paris. To remember the time I ate Coquilles St Jacques at a riverside restaurant with a friend, sunlight glancing over the Seine; to recall long lunches and late nights at Café Mabillon – where we always ended up because it was always open – and lazy walks along Boulevard Saint-Germain ogling the clothes and accessories.

I haven’t been to all the places in After Paris – including Hôtel de Crillon, although I did pass it daily as I walked from my apartment to work near the Arc De Triomphe – but it is nice to have some new places on my list for my next visit.

Nicole’s latest novel After Paris is published on 21^st July by Aria in hardback for £20. You can read more about it here 

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