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.

First off, I found the title and cover very misleading. I'd expected this book to help get us in the frame of mind for walking and exploring, and give us tips for noticing things along the way and maximising our experiences. I guess I thought it would be more of a hobby guide, so to speak. Instead, it turns out to be a re-telling of the lives of different academic women throughout history, majoring on their social and feminist agendas. One thing they had in common is that they liked to walk the streets of their big cities, yet the book doesn't say all that much about their walking at all, considering the title.

I think the author meant to tie it all together. At the start she mentions how the flaneur (or male aimless pleasure walker) got a bit of attention and recognition in the nineteenth century, but not his female counterpart, because many people denied the existence of such a thing as a flaneuse. Lauren Elkin set out to show that although they were hidden, they really were there. At this stage it seemed the book would turn out to be a bit like a thesis or doctorate; an intellectual social commentary about walking, rather than a book encouraging us all to get out and walk more. I was still OK with that. But then as I said, it diverged in all sorts of different directions unrelated to walking at all.

The small snippets Elkin did say about the subject were great. It can be considered mapping an area with our feet, and we notice that the names a city bestows on its streets and landmarks reflects the values it holds. She also says that walking reminds her of reading, because we feel as if we're temporarily a part of lives and conversations that are unrelated to us, and form a sort of unspoken comradeship with a wider whole. I like that sort of reflection, but there weren't enough of them.

If you're looking for a text book on the lives of Jean Rhys, George Sands, Virginia Woolf, Martha Gelhorn and Agnes Varda, this might fit the bill. Yet if you want a book focused of walking, well, this is not so much. I found it hard to hold my attention several times.

Overall, it's a dense book with hours of hard work crammed into it, and plenty to reflect on, but it wasn't what I thought I was ordering. In this case, I didn't want heavy and rich, but light and easy to digest. It was like having the wrong dish from the kitchen placed in front of me, and I'm going to rank it as such :(

Thanks to Net Galley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for my review copy.

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.

As a reader of psychogeographical books (being the usual British term used for this genre) , I have not until reading this
book noticed the apparent absence of women writers of this genre. Lauren alludes to the fact that the normal stereotype of a British psychogeographer is a middle aged male with a rucksack and camera exploring the out of town shopping malls and business parks, taking photos of graffitied underpasses and abandoned factories . A type not too dissimilar in appearance to a train spotter. The most notable British writers of the present all seem to be male i.e Iain Sinclair, Will Self, Robert Macfarlane, Peter Ackroyd, Stewart Home etc. It is against this background that Lauren shows the part that the defiant female urban walker has played and how their environment influenced their work.

This thought provoking and immensely well researched work principally covers the cities of New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and Venice. These are the cities which influenced and had a profound effect on the author's life. But it is principally Paris that dominates this work. The word flâneur being associated with a a literary type from the 19th century, walking and exploring the streets of Paris. It would have been unthinkable for a woman to partake in such a past time during this period which lead to George Sand to cross dress as a male (illegal under French Law) to enable her to walk the streets and go to the theatre on her own without difficulty.

Each city is linked to both the author's own experience and also female artists who have used and been effected by their environment. In London we have Virginia Woolf's 1927 essay "Street Haunting" reclaiming a space in the streets for women. In Venice we have Sophie Calle's photographic work Suite Venitienne (1979), where disguised she follows a man named only as Henrie B around the city. A man she had previously met at a party in Paris. Amongst a number of artists referenced for Paris we have Agnes Varda associated with the French new wave and here her film Cleo from 5 to 7 following a pop singer through 2 hours while she awaits the results of biopsy. One of the joys of a book like this is to introduce the reader to artists that they are not familiar with and perhaps get them to seek out some of their work.

Lauren would after much tribulations eventually obtain French citizenship and the book contains the story of revolt inherent in Paris's history. From the Revolution to the Paris Commune to the student revolt of 1968 and its influence on the City. I certainly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anybody who wants an intelligent and interesting read.

**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.