Cocktails in Paris

Michael Newman's novel Cocktails In Paris is a witty, engaging satire on the café life as lived by six twenty-something foreign students on Paris's left bank. The story takes place during a single afternoon at an outdoor café table. As the erudite but pompous, Oxford-educated Simon and the bright, earnest African-American David spend the afternoon drinking and engaging in a prolonged verbal joust, they are watched by the sweet German girl Katya, who barely says a word. After a while they are joined by the sophisticated Jewish-American Princess sisters Tricia and Julia, whose jaded, worldly comments provide a satiric counterpoint to the boys' semi-pointless argumentation. As the afternoon falls into evening Magnus, a Swedish friend, joins them for the drunken finale.