Do Not Go Gentle. Go to Paris by Gail Thorell Schilling: book review

Do Not Go Gentle. Go to Paris: Travels of an Uncertain Woman of a Certain Age (2019) is set in Paris in 2010.

The author, at 72 years of age, is writing about her month-long holiday in Paris, almost ten years earlier, when she was 62 years old – a trip gifted to her by her son Tom. She worries about everything that could go wrong during the trip: pickpockets, driving, sore ankles, ‘senior moments’ and money.

She is contemplating her age, and in doing so she not only looks inwards, but also outwards at other people she sees or thinks about. She ponders, ‘what are other people doing at my age?’

She looks at the youth and at people who look similar to her age: back and forth, youth and age, past and present. She also takes a look back at ‘older’ people she has known, to compare them with herself.

But it is also about sight-seeing, eating, walking, and reading her guidebook. And she’s very precise with her train and bus timetables.

This is a slow-moving journey from rural America and childhood dreams to an awakening in the city of dreams, Paris, putting the past in the past, and taking a leap forward.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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