Why subscribe to An American Who Fled Paris?
Because you are interested in reading about a middle-aged woman flailing through a great life reset in the French countryside. Because you want some perspective on French goings-on from an American who has paid a lot of attention to politics and style and silliness in both countries, and who writes about all of it in your language.
I’m Alexandra Marshall, an American journalist. From 2006 til a couple years ago, I lived in Paris doing fashion and travel and food journalism for Magazines You Must Know: WSJ., Travel + Leisure, Departures, Vogue, W, the New York Times, Air Mail. Et cetera. Paris was fine for a while, but it was getting nastier and hangrier by the day. Not too long after Emily showed up, I finally made plans to get the fuck out.
In 2021, I moved to a village of 175 people in a region of Lower Normandy called Le Perche. One day it might become the Hudson Valley or Sonoma, but for now, there are like three decent restaurants within a 75 mile radius and no single men with all their teeth. (Tons of married ones without them, though, as I’d soon discover on the dating apps.)
This radical move wasn’t entirely my choice. My live-in partner and I broke up. (He’s a 50+ French man; three guesses as to why. No? Here’s a hint: she was 35, and had a facial piercing.) Thanks to a couple bad work years, I was condemned to a future tiny apartment in a glum neighborhood, so, fully in shock, I decided I should up and move two hours west into the middle of a forest where I only knew two part-timers. Le Perche seemed like a nicer place to piece my obliterated self back together. I guess? It is the French capital of blood sausage, after all.
When I got out here to the sticks, it was weird, and I had to make a whole new set of friends, learn countrified customs, renovate a crumbling house, wander aimlessly through forests and figure out how to make a wood pellet heating system not set itself on fire. (I failed that one.) And then it started to work itself out, and now I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Most of the first year or so of this ongoing newsletter is related to that bonkers but ultimately fortuitous life decision. It took the form of a serialized memoir with Chapters—44 of them to be precise. If you want Peter Mayle, God bless him, the memoir portion of this Substack is not that. I have not (so far) fallen into the brawny arms of a lumberjack who will finally pound the urban ennui out of me. A lot of the people I have come to know and love here were originally from somewhere else. I wonder if there isn’t something about the place that pulls people to it who need it. TBD.
Once that arc completed, I decided to keep writing from where I am, off of any narrative timeline other than the present. It may be that part of my posting that brought you over. Dip back into the numbered chapters if you’re looking for something a little more escapist. Or just stick around going forward, when I will mansplain the funnier side of French politics to you, and sometimes reflect on existential American shit, now that we’ve shot ourselves in the foot for the second time in less than a decade, and what Americanness is up for question, yet again.
This platform is an ongoing experiment, which is its crazy brilliance. I’ll do my damndest to post every other Saturday or Sunday, and I’d be thrilled if you want to join me.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update, unless you don’t care about blood sausage. Philistine.
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