I found this book quite interesting, insightful and exciting.

I loved this book, but beware that it isn't an "easy" read. The information compiled in Flâneuse is dissertation-level. I read this as an e-book but would like to have a physical copy for future reference. Women walking freely through cities have not always been social acceptable. Elkin delves into the obvious and more complex aspects of the gender divide of what now may be seen as a simple stroll.

Lauren Elkin is down on suburbs: they're places where you can't or shouldn't be seen walking; places where, in fiction, women who transgress boundaries are punished (thinking of everything from Madame Bovary to Revolutionary Road). When she imagines to herself what the female version of that well-known historical figure, the carefree flâneur, might be, she thinks about women who freely wandered the world's great cities without having the more insalubrious connotation of the word 'streetwalker' applied to them.

Back in the 1840s, a flâneur was of necessity a man – 'As if,' Elkin jokes, 'a penis were a requisite walking appendage, like a cane.' The object of this wide-ranging, erudite book, then, is to tell the forgotten history of those female artists and writers – the flâneuses – who paved the way so that future generations of women could walk around freely in pursuit of their creative professions.

In most chapters, Elkin chooses a patron(ess) saint, discussing her life and work and how the two were intertwined. For instance, the first chapter on Paris is mostly about Jean Rhys, whose sad, wandering female characters take on some of the unhappiness of their creator's life. The London chapter, likewise, is mostly about Virginia Woolf, who, like her heroine Mrs Dalloway, was a typical flâneuse. Other sections focus on George Sand, the artist Sophie Calle, the filmmaker Agnès Varda, and war correspondent/novelist (and Hemingway wife) Martha Gellhorn, city walkers all. In Sand's case, it was not just moving from the countryside to the city but also wearing men's clothing that gave her the freedom she sought.

Throughout, Elkin weaves in fragments of her own history. Her life has pivoted around two of the book's model cities: she attended university in New York, the city in whose environs she was raised, and studied abroad in Paris, which she later chose to make home. She is able to spot the ways in which she's come full circle: she had a doomed relationship with a fellow student from New York during her year abroad, and ten years later she found herself teaching the works of Rhys – an expert at heartbreak – on that very same study abroad programme. Elsewhere she recalls researching a novel set in Venice when she should have been writing her PhD, and a lonely time spent in Tokyo, where she'd followed a boyfriend.

In a neat example of form flowing from content, this book meanders from city to city and figure to figure, sometimes seeming more random than is necessary. My interest waned during a couple of later chapters on protesting ('taking to the streets') and the films of Agnès Varda. I wasn't always convinced by the connections the author draws; I might have been just as happy reading a work of pure memoir with the occasional literary point of reference. However, especially when she's musing on Gellhorn's rootlessness, Elkin captures the angst of being a woman caught between places and purposes in a way that expatriates like myself will appreciate:

'We may keep the home fire burning, or we may burn the house down; we may stay home, burning inwardly, or we may take off in a conflagration of self-assertion. We watch the fires of destruction, of desire, and of ambition, and wonder what we can risk, and what we might gain.'

'All of human history is a story of migrations and conquests. All of us are exiles, but some of us are more aware of it than others.'

It's in making the history of the flâneuse personal that Elkin opens her book up to a wider swathe of readers than just the feminist social historians and literary critics who might seem like her natural audience. I would particularly recommend this to readers of Rebecca Solnit and Olivia Laing.

This is great look at how women are presented in society when they want to walk through the city. I enjoyed reading about the concept of flaunese.

This book gave me so much to think about. I copied down a ton quotes and I've been pondering them ever since. It's essentially about women who walk in cities as portrayed in art, as well as Elkin's own experiences around the world. Elkin's memories served as the strongest part and I wish she'd shared more along these lines. While the women she profiled were mostly interesting, I was more drawn to Elkin's connection to the cities she's lived in and her personal insights about the way walking can help us feel more at home in the world. It's worth considering the differences between the ways men and women interact with a city and I was impressed with the connections she made and how empowered I felt while reading. I especially appreciated the chapter on protests (in Paris no less!) and the way marching shows the government what you don't agree with as much as it shows your fellow citizens it's worth taking a stand.

First, a quick definition of the male version, flaneur: an idler, a loafer. It's someone who spends a lot of time walking around their community, and thus recognizing things others would miss in their hurried rush from place to place. I was drawn to this book, Flaneuse, because it offered stories about women who wander around some amazing cities. It was a good book, but I had no idea it would cover so many literary characters. It told of the author's wanderings in each city, but also told of literary women from different periods throughout history. That was a bit much for me to wade through, because I wasn't familiar with most of the references. Overall, it was still a solid read. If you are a Literature enthusiast, you'll enjoy this immensely.

This is a great book in the art of slowing down and enjoying the view. I loved learning the history of the unrealistic idea that a woman can actually be as inspired and as liberated as a man just to roam. A great book for travelers, those who love art and architecture or women's history buffs. I will look at cities and traveling differently from now on.

http://bookriot.com/2017/04/03/buy-borrow-bypass-memoirs-and-more/

It speaks volumes that there is no feminine form of flâneur. It shouldn't be - but sadly very much still is - considered transgressive for a woman to assert her right to take up space, to embark on the wandering urban adventures that historically have been the preserve of men. Elkin does an excellent job of combining travel writing and memoir with the stories of six literary women - Jean Rhys in Paris, Virginia Woolf in London, amongst others - for whom exploring cities by walking was an important facet of their lives. Having read and enjoyed Edmund White's The Flâneur a few years ago, I was intrigued by Elkin's feminist take on the notion of the flâneur. Also reminiscent in parts of Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and well-researched addition to the growing field of psychogeography.

This is one of the most disappointing and most misleading books I have read in a very long time. Actually, I don't think I have ever been so mislead by a book before. The full title is
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London but very little of the book is actually about the art of walking. Really, this book is a history of several women writer's lives of the past with a mishmash of topics thrown in between them, including but not limited to: immigration, feminism, writing, protests, marching, travel, and romantic relationships. There was even a section that had page after page of a detailed retelling of a movie. WHY???

There is a ton of quoting the featured women's books or book about them and most of it is regarding the rights and freedoms (or lack thereof) of women in the particular decade that they came from.

What I wanted going into this book - a first-person view of "flâneusing" - we actually got very little of. There are a few paragraphs of the author's time spent in Paris or Venice that I quite enjoyed but 90% of the book was page after page of history and information about these women and none of it has anything to do with FLANEUR. Not only was it not about the flâneur, what it is comprised of is such a mishmash it's hard to make sense of anything.

2/5 Stars (I have given it 2 stars because I did enjoy what few words there were on the title topic)

I was given a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It’s difficult to describe this thoroughly entertaining and illuminating book – part memoir, part cultural history, part biography, part psycho-geography – but its many parts add up to a very satisfactory whole. Lauren Elkin likes to walk around cities, to be a flaneuse and to discover the soul of places on foot. Although we don’t often hear about other women walkers, they have always been around, from Mrs Dalloway to George Sand to Martha Gellhorn, and Elkin’s wide-ranging exploration makes for a most enjoyable read. Some of the chapters flagged a little for me – I wasn't so interested in Agnes Varda, for example – but overall this is a book that I’m sure I will return to whenever I’m in any of the cities examined. Some evocative and atmospheric illustrations add to the reading pleasure.

**Review will be published to blog on 21 Feb 2017 at 10:00AM EST**

I chose this book because:

As a linguist, I find the history of how a word comes into being interesting, and especially that of a word that has to do with travel, women, and creatives. Also I’m completely in love with this cover, from the illustration to the typography. I’d totally get a poster of this.

Upon reading it:

The approach to this word was not linguistic, but more like sociology or urban studies (or Growth and Structure of Cities, as we like to call it at Bryn Mawr College) or history. Of course, I was looking forward to a linguistic perspective, but I have taken both sociology and cities courses in college so I found those approaches interesting too, and you might as well.

If you’re into history, into writers and creatives, and into their histories, this could be a book for you. The book focused very specifically on various writers that I personally didn’t feel particularly invested in, which is probably why I found the book slow at times and very history-textbook-ish, but I think that may just be because I’m interested in different topics--the writing itself is fine. Oh, and some knowledge of the French language may also add some extra charm to the book for you.

This book is very much about the journey. And I’d like to think that I’m a person who would appreciate that to the fullest in all aspects of life, but I actually found many parts of the book too slow for my taste. The parts that were more up my speed were the parts towards the end of each chapter, and also the epilogue. If you give this book a try and can’t get into it because you feel the same as me about the pace of the narrative, and you want to put the book down, I’d suggest at least skipping to the epilogue before putting the book away. There’s some interesting stuff there! (I could read a whole critique on that last photograph!)

Could not finish. I tried several times but it didn't keep my interest.