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Apart from the personal advantage she finds in being able to stay in the
thrall of Paris by night, while engaging with history by day, Ina Caro showcases
a key asset for the time traveller - the train system of France!
She discovers that trains are a more direct route to the past than cars. For
the time traveller, who doesn't want to be distracted by twenty-first century
traffic jams and suburban sprawl, she realises that trains, especially French
trains, provide a more direct route to the past because of another little aspect
of history - the period in which railroads were built.
As she says, French railroads, whose nineteenth-century stations were
built in the old cities before the suburbs grew, whisk you through this maze of
faceless suburbs and deposit you sans traffic in the city's ancient past.
And to top it off, she is able to avoid the ritual of packing and unpacking
that accompanied the longer car journeys she describes in her first book "The
Road from the Past: Traveling through History in France".
For different journeys she uses different parts of the French train system to
venture out from central Paris. There's the Métro, the TGV (Trainà Grande
Vitesse), the SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer) or the RER (Réseau
Express Régional).
Under each chapter heading, Caro includes key information about which type
of train to take, on which line, and the station at which to board and/or
alight.
Most of Ina Caro's train trips take less than ninety minutes and within each
chapter she will often add more specific information about trip durations.
"Paris to the Past" rolls along like a train on its tracks, with rhythmic
sentences and changing views as Caro rattles through the past. As she walks
through the cathedrals and chateaux, she slows down like a train pulling into a
station, stopping to view a stained glass window through her binoculars, or to
closely examine a chateau's fresco to confirm the court gossip of the period.
Her primary focus is on the events and luminaries of each period and the
historical links and consequences of the past. And it's a wonderful overview of
French history.
What I particularly enjoyed was her ability to combine detail with the bigger
picture. I loved her analogies with food and jewellery. Just listen to her
first impressions of the Gothic Cathedral of Chartres: Aesthetic pleasure
increases as you enter the cathedral, which is dappled with the filtered
jewelled light from 27,000 square feet of stained glass windows. And she
described Tours as a jewel of a city surrounded by a necklace of castles.
Then she uses her love of food in her descriptions of places. She talks of
train trips that linger in your mind for years ... like your first taste of the
Loire Valley's white asparagus in the spring. And she describes Blanche of
Castille's hold on her regency as being as secure as a bubble of air in a
freshly baked soufflé.
Caro sometimes mentions the restaurants she visits, cleverly linking them
with history. For example, she talks about the chairs in one of the restaurants
she visits. The high-backed wooden chairs, a style created in the Middle
Ages when back-stabbings were common, prevented our assassination but also made
us quite comfortable.
Ina Caro then is just as fascinated as Woody Allen with the interweaving of
France's past and the present. She manages to entertain like Woody Allen,
though in a different way. She shares Woody Allen's fascination with historical
figures, though she selects different ones. She's no dry historian and she even
shares Woody Allen's fascination with rain, though she prefers a sunny day, any
day.
After reading the book, I really recommend taking Ina Caro's advice. To time
travel from Paris, take a train, not a vintage car! And make sure you take
"Paris to the Past" to help you interpret each time period you find yourself in.
W H Norton & Company Ltd 2011
ISBN13: 978-0-39307-894-7
ISBN10: 0-39307-894-9
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