Parc Monceau and the Joy of a Loop, When All the World Is a Labyrinth

Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels and two award-winning story collections. Her contemporary espionage novel set in Paris, Animals of the French Species, is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic.

I was cleaning out the basement recently when I stumbled upon a notebook from Paris that I’d forgotten. The cover of the notebook features Claude Monet’s Soleil couchant Sur la Sene a Lavacourt, effet d’hiver (1880), and the label on the back says Petit Palais; I must have purchased it in the gift shop.

I have notebooks from museum gift shops and bookstores all over Europe, going back to the early nineties. But I have more notebooks from Paris than anywhere else, purchased and partially filled in during the strangely compressed years of 2018-2020. Most contain a few dozen pages of writing. Invariably I lose every notebook, then find it months or years later. Rediscovering these notebooks is a bit like time travel.

There are only three entries in the Petit Palais notebook. The first is dated August 30, 2019, and was written in Parc Monceau, which was only a block and a half from our apartment. I went to Parc Monceau almost daily to walk and sometimes to write. The August 30th entry is the beginning of a novel. The first sentence is, “It begins like this.” Well, I suppose that’s one way to start, if a bit obvious. How did it end? Your guess is as good as mine.

In 1877, Gustave Caillebotte, who lived a few blocks from Parc Monceau, painted the walking path that loops around the perimeter. Caillebotte’s painting bring to mind the long walks I took on that very loop, past the green benches, day after day after day, along Allee Jacques Gamerin.