Mademoiselle Victorine
Mademoiselle Victorine: A Novel, written by Debra Finerman, is a fictionalized accounting of historical events in 1860s Paris. Victorine, the lead character, is less than a courtesan but more than a streetwalker. She uses her physical beauty and sexual skills to work her way through the upper levels of Parisian society in her quest for rich men, married or not. I couldn’t find anything to like about such a self-absorbed and shallow character, but I thoroughly enjoyed Finerman’s depth of detail throughout the book. I felt that if I closed my eyes I would actually be in that period of time.