Paris Adieu is a coming-of-age tale of life lessons, romance and self-empowerment all wrapped in the sights, sounds and smells of Paris.
The first time Ava Fodor visits Paris as a nineteen-year-old au pair, she has no idea who she is. Paris introduces Ava to the type of woman she’d like to become. Her French boyfriend introduces her to the concept of being comfortable in her own skin. If only she knew how… When she gets into Yale, she returns home, but four years later she’s back for an encounter with a Frenchman that awakens her to womanhood. If only she could stay… Five years later, Ava returns to Paris as a singer/pianist. She meets Arnaud, a foreign correspondent, who captures her heart, but tortures her with long absences. While he’s away, she throws herself into songwriting where she achieves an authenticity she doesn’t feel onstage. With the help of Arnaud’s childhood friend Pierre, who appreciates Ava in a way Arnaud doesn’t, Ava takes the reins of her own future. Armed with the lessons Paris has taught her, she bids adieu to Arnaud, Pierre and her very first love—the City of Light. But will the one man who truly understands her follow?
Paris Adieu is Part I of The Ava Series: Ava Fodor’s journey of self discovery, continued in Black is Not a Color.
Targeted Age Group:: 18 and up
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
The inspiration for Paris Adieu is the plump, frizzy-haired nineteen-year-old girl I once was, who went to Paris as an au pair and discovered I didn’t need to be anything other than who I was to be fabulous. Okay, I’m still working on it… If you’re working on being fabulous too, read Paris Adieu and its sequel Black is Not a Color.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Ava Fodor evolved as the series did. She’s highly imperfect, unexpectedly charming, and loveable for mostly the wrong reasons. As The Ava Series evolves, especially with Part II:Black is Not a Color, she begins to focus less on her interior struggles and focus on those she loves around her, i.e. her boyfriend Pierre, her father Zsolt, and her girlfriends Sanja and Narcisa. All my characters were based on someone I once knew but turned into brand new made-up characters once the story got going. That’s the fun of fiction-writing!
Book Sample
“Men don’t fall in love with a woman who is perfect. They fall in love with a woman who is specific. A woman who is comfortable with herself can be herself specifically. She is free to explore who she is because she is not comparing herself to other women all the time, trying to be someone she’s not.”
My jaw dropped. Jean-Michel’s words fell into my receptive psyche like a sun shower of wisdom. Everything he said hit home. It made such sense. And it suddenly made my years of self-consciousness and self-loathing completely senseless. Not to mention the entire U.S. advertising industry.
Men wanted a woman who was in love with herself. Not a woman with enormous breasts, shiny long blonde hair, or a flat stomach and long legs. They wanted a woman who announced to the world she was comfortable in her own skin.
As far as I was able to fall in love with Jean-Michel, my heart opened to him at that moment. He had just saved me years of unnecessary counseling trying to get over the fact that I wasn’t perfect. According to him, I didn’t need to be perfect; I just needed to be comfortable in my skin. I wasn’t there yet, but at least now I had something to chew on.
About the Author:
ROZSA GASTON writes playful books on serious matters. Women getting what they want out of life is one of them. She studied European intellectual history at Yale, and then received her master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia. In between, she worked as a singer/pianist all over the world. She lives in Bronxville, NY with her family.
Other books include The Ava Series: Paris Adieu, Part I and Black is Not a Color, Part II, Budapest Romance, Running from Love, Dog Sitters and Lyric. Her upcoming novel is Sense of Touch, a fictionalized story of Anne of Brittany and Queen of France.
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