No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute

Commuting between English and French, Lauren Elkin chronicles a life in transit. From musings on Virginia Woolf and Georges Perec, to her first impressions in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, to the discovery of her ectopic pregnancy, her diary sketches a portrait of the author, not as an artist, but as a pregnant woman on a Parisian bus. In the troubling intimacy of public transport, Elkin queries the lines between togetherness and being apart, between the everyday and the eventful, registering the ordinary makings of a city and its people. ‘Perhaps one of the most interesting voices claiming the streets for women at the moment…’ - Will Self ‘A gentle litany of persistently committed noticing. Paris – as viewed from the vantage point of a daily bus journey – is not so much exhausted as it is enchanted by the gift of attention:

the work glitters with life. ’ -Jenn Ashworth, author of Notes Made While Falling ‘In Elkin’s hands, the iPhone is a psychic gauge. On her bus jou