Paris Never Leaves You

From Booklist This first novel by the daughter of the late Harold Robbins continues his tradition of chronicling the lives of the rich and famous. The major players here are beautiful, wealthy, oversexed and one-dimensional. When young, naive, innocent, and beautiful Djuna Cortez learns that she has inherited a Paris apartment, a winery in the Loire, and the art collection of her grandfather (the famous painter Joaquim Carlos Cortez), she decides to settle in Paris, where she gets caught up in the glittering lifestyle of the jet set. Because she is so naive and trusting, Djuna soon becomes prey to a group of wily fortune hunters and barely gets out of the mess alive. Robbins includes an oddly disjointed, half^-hearted look at Paris cafelife in the 1930s, as Djuna explores her grandfather's journals, which detail his innumerous affairs and other meticulously recorded peccadillos. Readers may find Adreana's novel tamer than her father's works and not nearly as blatantly tawdry. Long-winded, long-drawn, and just plain long, this debut novel nonetheless will arouse interest. Kathleen Hughes Product Description This debut novel from popular author Harold Robbins's daughter offers a glittering tale of love, betrayal, and sacrifice as it follows heiress Djuna Cortez struggle to find strength in her own life through journals written by her grandfather. 50,000 first printing. From Kirkus Reviews The daughter of Harold Robbins debuts with a Paris romance in which Cinderella marries Prince Charming, only to find hes secretly the Beast. Robbins overstates her heroine's every feeling and supercharges each character into near-caricature. She clearly loves landscape and description and reels off plenty of brand names stickered to the rich and famous. Motherless, penniless American Djuna Cortez, only 21 and alone in the City of Light, has just had her charge card cut off by her surly father, Emile, when she receives a letter stating that shes inherited vast wealth from Emile's father, the well-known painter Joaqum Carlos Cortez. (Emile himself is passed over, for reasons revealed only near the close.) Aside from her grandfather's bank accounts, Djuna also inherits his large apartment and studio, his paintings and chateau, publishing rights to his ten journals, and his winery in the Loire Valley. As Djuna reads the journals, the story alternates between her firsthand account of Parisian high society in the mid-1980s and Joaqum's notes about his youth as a budding bohemian artist in Paris during the '30s and '40s: his love affairs, models, and ritzy friends, including towering but luminous egoist/hat-designer Mitya Troubetskoy and, much later, budding novelist Pascal Maron, both of whom have been Joaqum's lovers and are now partial inheritors. Djunas snooty half-brother introduces her to six-foot African model Navarine, who in turns leads her into a romance with Jean-August Briard, a strangely reserved but blindingly handsome ``cosmopolitan hero out of a Fitzgerald novel'' who knows everything about grapes and offers to help save her failing winery. Unfortunately, Djuna discovers only after she marries him that his reserve masks sadism. Within months, shes bruised, battered, and seeking divorce. Then Jean-August really gets mad . . . . Carefully crafted for its genre, but only faintly reminiscent of anything real. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I came to Paris naive, open, untouched, and as transparent as a glass palette. The year I spent in the City of Light I was to discover a city of art and sin. I experienced Paris, not through my mind, but through an awakening of the senses that allowed me to discover hidden desires. I became aware of a city filled with mutable colors, rich textures, contagious moods, intoxicating powers, diaphanous and distorted faces, masks of comedy and tragedy. Paris captured my heart, imprinting