Kiss Me Again, Paris a Memoir

Literary Nonfiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Memoir. Includes 130 vintage photographs. Winner of the 2018 International Book Award in the LGBTQ Non-Fiction category. Nominated for a 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir. Winner of a 2016 WNBA Award, juried by Deirdre Bair. From Paris's famous opera house to its gossip-rich salons, KISS ME AGAIN, PARIS celebrates youth at the end of the 1970s, when women were in fashion and every woman, gay or straight, fell in love with women.

Author Renate Stendhal ekes out a living as a cultural journalist in Europe's most cultured city. She walks Paris at night dressed as a boy, has friends and lovers among artists and writers, and falls under the spell of the mercurial actress Claude, who has all of Paris talking. At the same time, she finds herself in the crosshairs of an alluring stranger who seems to appear everywhere and nowhere at once. There are mysteries with and without clues. Is sexual obsession a way to avoid the risk of love?

Filled with sensuality, style, romance, and suspense, Stendhal plays with the concept of memoir as a genre and transports the reader to another time and place. No matter what age, you'll be young and in love again when you reach the last page.

Renate Stendhal's daring new book throbs with the pulse of Paris in the 1970s. Written with verve, this book captures the sense of erotic excitement that Paris continues to inspire.--Marilyn Yalom, author of How the French Invented Love and The Social Sex

Most memories fade to smoldering embers. Renate Stendhal's recollections have remained a bonfire. The tapestry of her remembrances had their genesis in her rejection of a former life and the embrace of a new authentic one. Details of her years living in Paris during the '70s are carved into her psyche. She takes us with her to the cafes where the fragrance of a passing woman would turn heads. We hear the murmur of the Seine. We see the dark shadows under a bridge and the glow of a cigarette as a rouged mouth draws on it. There's an old adage that says memories worth remembering are remembered. Whoever coined this must have had Renate Stendhal in mind.--Anna Hamilton Phelan, screenwriter of Mask, Gorillas in the Mist, and Girl, Interrupted

The thing about Renate Stendhal, for the reader of this book, is that she feels Paris in every fiber of her being. And she is able to carry the reader with her into all these delicious places, some well known and some known to few. The great thing is to relax and let her take you. It is a memorable journey.--Hugh Van Dusen, executive editor (for 60 years), HarperCollins

Never has a memoir enraptured me as completely as Kiss Me Again, Paris...Every intricate detail [the author] dives into came alive before my eyes, not just through her masterful prose, but through the gorgeous pictures scattered throughout the memoir...The specificity in the detail is astounding, and the decadence in the language will leave you begging to read more. --Lesbrary

[Stendhal's] memoir is notable for a variety of reasons: it's a window into the gay female melee of the moment, and she has a particular way of recalling her encounters with luminaries. Some she names outright, like Meret Oppenheim and Pina Bausch; others' identities she keeps under wraps. It's a tactic that places the book in a category Stendhal playfully refers to as memoir à clef, a twist on the roman à clef: a novel with 'keys' to uncovering the real in the fictional.--Autostraddle