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.
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?
“In her third memoir, Jayne Tuttle grapples with paradoxes of gender and parenting. The Australian emigré is approaching 40, new to motherhood, nearing burnout and feeling unmoored in Paris, her home since her early twenties. The personal becomes universal as Tuttle attempts to resolve the tension between her desire to cling to an autonomous, creative self and the need to fulfil the gendered demands of motherhood. Financial pressures add to this tension: ironically, as Tuttle and her husband’s dream home in one of the city’s impasses seems increasingly out of reach, it is their relationship that hurtles towards an impasse - a clever use of the two languages at the Francophile’s disposal. The author’s layering of cinematic, literary, architectural and historical insights with personal reflections renders an intimate, multi-dimensional cartography of both the city and her inner world, though always with an outsider’s sensibility and an awareness of the near-impenetrable divides between Parisienne and “other”, old self and new self.”
“An insightful, compelling and (occasionally) painful exploration of working motherhood. The push and pull between creating art and earning a living, the difficulty of challenging gender roles in a relationship, the strangeness of building a life in a new country and culture … The Sea in the Metro beautifully brings all of these complex ideas together, with piercing clarity. Jayne Tuttle has created an exquisite portrait of a marriage adapting to the instability of parenthood, cast against a vivid backdrop of real Parisian life. A rare gem.”
“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.”
“The Sea in the Metro is a paean to the big life, and depicts it in all its fizzing, thrilling complexity. A novel of questions, longing, and falling in and out of love with motherhood, the city, and love itself. I adored it.”
“Stunning. Her best yet. The Sea in the Metro proves that Jayne Tuttle is a major talent.”
“As hectic and intimidatingly brilliant as Paris itself, The Sea in the Metro charts the agonies and ecstasies of creativity, motherhood, and trying to do it all. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read about the festering resentments and waves of self-righteousness that can happen once children come into an artists’ marriage - and easily the best of this kind set in la ville lumière.”