Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London

If the word flâneur conjures up visions of Baudelaire, boulevards and bohemia – then what exactly is a flâneuse?

In this gloriously provocative and celebratory book, Lauren Elkin defines her as ‘a determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk’.

Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse traces the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and moves us to Paris, via Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring along the way the paths taken by the flâneuses who have lived and walked in those cities.

From nineteenth-century novelist George Sand to artist Sophie Calle, from war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to film-maker Agnes Varda, Flâneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed woman encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.

Review

An uplifting, gender-bending critique of how women negotiate public space―Deborah Levy, Guardian, Book of the Year

Deliciously spiky and seditious, she takes her readers on a rich, intelligent and lively meander through cultural history, biography, literary criticism, urban topography and memoir… I defy anyone to read this celebratory study and not feel inspired to take to the streets in one way or another.―Lucy Scholes, Observer

Well researched and larded with examples, this picaresque account of a picaresque longing successfully paints women back into the city... Elkin reboots the appetite to go walking and thinking in the city, which can only be a good thing.―Evening Standard

Flâneuse is not simply a reclaiming of space, but also of a suppressed intellectual and cultural history. Finding ways to reframe images of women walking and to reverse male gazes, Flâneuse builds on recent work by Rebecca Solnit and the artist Laura Oldfield Ford, among others, with striking intellectual vigour and clear, enrapturing prose.

―Financial Times

The thoughtful urban stroller Lauren Elkin is a self-appointed heir to Woolf's 'street haunter'. A memoir, a travelogue and an eminently likeable work of literary criticism, Flaneuse is more like a song sung under Elkin’s breath. [...] At its best, her book evokes reading aloud... reading your own life through the novels that form part of it.―Gaby Wood, Daily Telegraph

Wonderful… a joyful genealogy of the female urban walker. The book’s narrative meanders brilliantly and appropriately across several times periods at once… Elkin’s Flaneuse does not simply wander aimlessly, any more than Elkin does herself in this elegant book: she uses her reflection to question, challenge and create anew the life that she observes.―Lara Feigel, Guardian

An intense meditation on what it means to be a women and walk out in the world. Flaneuse encourages its readers to lace up their shoes and go for a walk. Elkin lets the reader become a companion to many women who have thought seriously about the relationship between a woman and the path she chooses to tread.―Erica Wagner, New Statesman

I've been waiting for years to see the history of women walkers in the city added to the critical literature of the flaneur--and here, in Lauren Elkin's really smart and lovely book―Vivian Gornick

Engaging, inspiring and vigorous... The persuasiveness with which she urges us to rethink and expand our understanding of the art of flânerie, together with the force of her insights and the strength and weight of her voice, leaves us with a contribution to the field that feels singular. Buy it, read it, talk about it. And carry it with you in your mind when you next go walking in the city.―Matthew Adams, The National

Flâneuse offers a rich engagement with the “psychogeography” of 20th-century literature and the contemporary city… A rich, rewarding pedalogue―Martin Doyle and Sara Keating, Irish Times

About the Author

Lauren Elkin is the author of several critically-acclaimed books, including Scaffolding, Art Monsters, and Flâneuse. Her essays on art, literature, and culture have appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta, Harper's, Le Monde, Les Inrockuptibles, and Frieze, among others. An award-winning translator, she lives between Paris and London.