About two things, Sue Harper was absolutely certain. Paris was the most exciting city in the world and retirement was supposed to be a time when anything was possible. But she was terrified. From the tragic life of a French diva to the story of a Jewish family destroyed by the Nazis, Harper discovered connections to Paris and to herself as she struggled with retirement.

When the rush of post-work life – that time when everything seemed possible – crashed into the panic of “Oh-oh, what now?” Harper felt rootless and disengaged. Worse still, from the outside, her retirement looked perfect. She and her partner travelled, skied in two hemispheres, and seemed to have it all. But at home, she filled her days with obsessive exercising, coffee dates and endless hours of mindless television.

Then her partner was accepted into an art course in Paris. Harper claimed she was going to be like Hemingway, become a flâneur and write about her adventures. She knew it was a lie. But slowly, as she mapped out her walks through cobblestoned neighbourhoods, city cemeteries and halls of ancient Greek vases in the vast Louvre museum, she found her way back to herself.

Table of contents

1. Retirement in black and white: Crisis point
2. The dead singer next door: Noticing what’s right beside you
3. The apartment on rue d’orchampt: Acceptance
4. Six hectares of the Louvre: Art as a project
5. Lessons in stone: Reclaiming myself
6. Old dog … new tricks: Stepping into a new life
7. Persephone upended: Myth busting
8. Walking beside the martyrs: The trials of venturing forth
9. From winter to spring: The search for self continues
10. End notes
11. Acknowledgements