Confessions of a Concierge: Madame Lucies History of Twentieth-Century France

By Bonnie G. Smith

Book Overview

"Bonnie Smith weaves biography and oral history into this vivid life of Madame Lucie, concierge of a Paris apartment building] and witness of nearly a century of French history. Both Smith and Madame Lucie are brilliant, flexible storytellers who present life as a continual flux between the poles of tradition and scandal, politics and private life, truth and memory. The garrulous and sometimes manipulative Madame Lucie seems more real than most subjects of biography and history; she steps out of these pages as full-bodied as a character in a novel." ---Ms.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300040385
• ISBN13: 9780300040388
• Release Date: September 1987
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

An Insider's View

Who has not wondered about those strange creatures; concierges. Just about every apartment house in France, new or old, has its own gatekeeper called a concierge. Having traveled many times to France, I never spent any time talking and finding out the details of the life of a concierge. They always seemed extremely unapproachable (or it could have been my insecurity with the language.)This slim volume does a very good job of profiling Madame Lucie's early years living outside Paris with her family, before she became a concierge. With many insites into the French mind and traditions, the reader is given a detailed veiw of family life in France before World War II. The later parts of the book reintroduce the reader to Madame Lucie as concierge and her job of running an apartment house and all of its interesting inhabitants, most of them artists and craftspeople. It is made quite clear how dominating and hard the Madame has become since the end of the war.A well written story that moves along quickly. I now know more about concierges than I did over the last thirty years of traveling to France and dealing with them first hand.