cover image Paris Bohemian

Paris Bohemian

Michelle Fogle. Legacy Imprints, $9.99 e-book (386p) ASIN B0D3FT35C5

Fogle (City of Liars) offers an enchanting narrative of the tumultuous friendship between composers Erik Satie and Claude Debussy. In 1890, 24-year-old music school dropout Erik meets the older and more successful Claude in a Paris music shop. Claude, recognizing the young man’s talent, invites him to become a Rosicrucian, and the order performs one of Erik’s pieces at a salon. Still, Erik struggles to make ends meet until he finds success incorporating American popular music into his compositions, while Claude takes a break from his own work to care for his wife after a miscarriage. Their relationship turns sour after Erik learns that Claude, who has grown resentful of Erik’s success, has used part of his work without permission in the 1908 piece “Children’s Corner.” Some of the prose is awkward (“I never wanted to perform dreary sauerkraut to their standards of mechanical perfection,” Erik narrates, describing his dismissal from a conservatory as a teen), but Fogle effectively captures the composers’ innovations and respect for each other’s work (“Somewhere between a chant and a recitative.... The music blurs the temporal boundaries, drawing me into another world,” Erik remarks on Claude’s 1902 opera, Pelléas et Mélisande). Those with an interest in classical music will find this hard to put down. (Self-published)