There can never be too many books written about Paris, whether they are fiction, history, or memoir, like this one.

Tuttle, a writer and performer, lives between France and Australia. She is a graduate of Melbourne University and Melbourne’s National Theatre and lived in Paris for 10 years, where she trained at the Jacques Lecoq Theatre School.

This memoir is slightly different from most others written about the famous City of Lights as it details her immersion in acting training. At the same time, it introduces readers to the delights of living in Paris or reminds those of us who adore that city just why we yearn to return. Her first brief visit was as a penniless tourist, finding work as an au pair, but she returned to Melbourne and studied acting.

A devastating family tragedy put her life on hold for some time, but after inquiring about the Lecoq acting school, and scholarships it offered, was amazed to be offered one. So back to Paris she went. It was a time of extremely hard work at the theatre school, living in a former monastery in an eclectic multicultural part of Paris, vastly different from the ordered part of the city she had previously known.

This is a sensuous book. Tuttle brings the reader to the chaotic street scenes, with African hairdressers next to Middle Eastern delicatessens, Indian dress shops, Chinese grocery shops, and old French brasseries and bars, with Turks, Czechs, Italians, Indians and French people all milling on the pavements.

As for the dying bit, that is almost what she does, in a uniquely French accident, but not before she has made Paris her own in the best possible way, exploring it by bicycle.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville