Lost In France – Claire Ross Dunn

It started with “number one: never open a book with weather,” and finished with “number ten: try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Good advice. Sabine stepped up the worn red stairs. On its risers were painted-on words: I wish I could show you When you are Lonely or In darkness The astonishing Light Of your own Being —Hafiz “Who’s Hafiz?” asked Aubin. “A Persian Sufi poet,” said Yves. On the landing, the wall was covered in framed photos of writers: Truman Capote, Simone de Beauvoir, Maya Angelou …

Yves pointed to a photo of Leonard Cohen. “Awesome Canadian like Sabine,” said Aubin. “Mais oui,” said Yves. “I saw that photo, and I found a book about him here and sat on that bench and read it. There’s a famous line from a song of his about how light gets into all the tiny cracks of life. Right there, I wrote the outline for a short film, called my friends from film school, and told them that I wanted to shoot that weekend. Which we did.”

“Can I see it?” she asked. “Sure. It’s amateur and self-important, but it got me into Cannes for the first time. Thank you, Leonard.” Yves wandered off. The next room had a piano, chairs, and another place to read or sleep. Sabine found Aubin a book on music production and pushed him into a comfy chair. “There. Read and feel some hope,” she said, plunking herself onto a bench, pulling a piece of paper from her notebook, and tearing it in strips, which she folded into a chapbook.

“Making me a book?” “I don’t know who it’s for.” “What’s it about?” “Don’t know that either. That’s what I like. You make a book, and then the idea falls into your brain, and off you go. If you hate it, you throw it out. Super low pressure.

Several years ago, while scrolling through Facebook, I read a “Suggested For You” post about a tiny, rural village in Spain on sale for one euro. It took great self-discipline not to pull out my credit card and buy it on the spot. I’ve been fascinated by one-euro programs across Europe ever since, the possibility of slowing down, escaping hustle culture, and living in a very different circumstance. That dream inspired this book. OceanofPDF.com CHAPTER ONE Marlow waited impatiently for her double espresso and gazed up at the drifting, lazy clouds.

Maybe at the meeting I’m about to be late for, she thought, I’ll flip a table, toss my laptop into the trash, scream, “I’M OUT,” and run for the elevator. Or maybe not. Marlow turned her attention to the people near the coffee truck. Stressed from work, wanting to just sit, stand still, be, over their lunch hour, they were instead facing the onslaught of downtown Toronto in late June.

She saw a puddle from the morning’s rainfall and pulled out her phone to shoot, through its ripples, passengers in the streetcar as it moved through frame, wishing they were elsewhere. She put the video through a filter, called it “passing thoughts,” and posted it online. These tiny videos were the last vestige of film school, but they made Marlow happy. She checked her cell. Shit. She was really late. Her coffee appeared. Marlow grabbed it and ran, tossing it back like a shooter, spilling some on her shirt.

Double shit but whatever. The caffeine had two minutes or less to hit her veins—all she had before her presentation to Victor Zane, CEO of the Renegade International Film Festival, or RIFF. She’d been up until four implementing her midlevel boss’s changes and was operating on no sleep. Her messy bun bobbed on her head and her boobs bounced. Quite the sight, no doubt. She arrived at the film festival building and saw Victor on the bistro patio facing her, in a meeting with someone. She made the switch from woefully late to just in time.

As long as he was later than she was, she was fine. But who was he meeting with? The back of their head was familiar.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 30ab5af9dfc1c692
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,597,447 bytes (4.384 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 301
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 454.31 minutes
• Total Words: 90,861
• Total Characters: 506,687
• Average Words per Page: 301.86
• Average Characters per Page: 1683.35

Most Frequent Words

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