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On the métro I ask her if she can see the sea.
She points at me.
Not la mère, I laugh. La mer! The sea!
I can’t see the sea, or myself as a mother, right now. All I see is sneakers and a skateboard and two shabby suitcases, one blue, one red. A soft, sweet head, curls tied up in pigtails, my face in them …
Jayne is a new mother in Paris trying to balance her creative ambition and lust for city life with the instinctual urges of motherhood - and failing.
As her relationship with her husband and the city strains, she searches for answers in a friendship with an older Frenchwoman, the streets, the crowds, in art and writing and new wave cinema… but finds only more questions. Something has to give, but what?
From the critically acclaimed author of Paris or Die and My Sweet Guillotine comes a powerfully written story of desire, art and the complexity of modern womanhood.
“This is a book like sheet lightning: sudden, illuminating and sometimes terrifying. The Sea in the Metro tells the story of falling out of love with a city and back in love with life, the perfect denouement to Jayne Tuttle’s Paris series. It’s frank, devastating and frequently hilarious, and written in prose as wild and original as the author herself. I loved it.”
“A whirlwind of longing – mother-longing, lover-longing, artist-longing – this book will sweep you off your feet.”
“Lyrical, fierce and often funny, The Sea in the Metro is a wonderfully vivid self-portrait of a young woman navigating the entanglements of love and loss, mortality and motherhood, creativity and paying the bills. It’s also a profound meditation on the idea of home. I loved it.”
“Living intersections of bodies and wit, there is an addictive element about it - memory, consciousness, motherhood. It is a truly sweeping account of viscera. Not giving fucks. Birth - poking thoughts.”
“Radiant, epic, fearless and compellingly honest ... Tuttle’s writing rings with authenticity while facing the darker, utterly real moments of motherhood, desire and the beautiful, infuriating pursuit of art. Tuttle’s skill reminds me of Elena Ferrante on authenticity: it is one thing to write precisely what happened, and another skill altogether to find a means and form for ‘what is intimately ours and is difficult to say even to ourselves.’
I know this book will speak to so many, and I want to go back and read the first two books in Tuttle’s trilogy right away.”
“Sometimes reading The Sea in the Metro is like looking in a mirror. Confronting. Other times it’s more like watching a football match complete with involuntary gasps, the occasional boo and a loud and lusty cheering on of our heroine. Which is all to say that the book is an entirely immersive experience. What a feat Jayne Tuttle’s latest book is. I loved it.”