ALEXANDRA JOEL

READING GROUP QUESTIONS

ABOUT THE BOOK Sometimes you have to lose everything to find yourself ...

After a shocking discovery, Grace Woods leaves her vast Australian sheep station and travels to tumultuous post-war Paris in order to find her true identity.

While working as a mannequin for Christian Dior, the world's newly acclaimed emperor of fashion, Grace mixes with counts and princesses, authors and artists, diplomats and politicians.

But when Grace falls for handsome Philippe Boyer she doesn't know that he is leading a double life, nor that his past might inflict devastating consequences upon her. As she is drawn into Philippe's dangerous world of international espionage, Grace discovers both the shattering truth of her origins – and that her life is in peril.

Inspired by an astonishing true story, The Paris Model is a tale of glamour, family secrets and heartbreak that takes you from the rolling plains of country Australia to the elegant salons of Paris.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexandra Joel is a former editor of the Australian edition of Harper’s Bazaar and Portfolio. While occupying a number of other executive positions in the media industry, she also contributed feature articles, interviews and reviews to national and metropolitan publications. She is the author of Parade: The Story of Fashion in Australia and Best Dressed: 200 Years of Fashion in Australia. Both detail the development of fashion, style and national identity. Her recent book, Rosetta: A Scandalous True Story, has been optioned for the screen by a major US-owned production company. With an honours degree from the University of Sydney and a graduate diploma from the Australian College of Applied Psychology, she has also been a practising counsellor and psychotherapist. Alexandra has two children and lives in Sydney with her husband. She is a keen student of art, fashion, history and politics and is exceedingly fond of Paris. READING GROUP QUESTIONS

1. How does knowing The Paris Model was inspired by real people and events affect your response to the novel?

2. How do you feel about Olive’s actions? Should she have told Grace the truth about who her parents really were? If so, at what age?

3. When it comes to being a parent, how important is biology?

4. To what extent is our identity tied to our beliefs about who our parents are?

5. Reuben makes several crucial decisions. Should he have made other choices?

6. Grace learns that courage takes different forms. In what ways did she display this quality? Was Olive courageous? Was Reuben?

7. Brigitte introduces the notion of morality’s grey areas’ to Grace. Soon afterwards, Grace finds herself in a number of situations where she is forced to struggle with her own principles. Were her choices justified? What examples can you think of from your own life when you have been confronted with ‘grey areas’?

8. Grace tells Jackie, ‘If you don’t take a gamble, you’re less likely to make a mistake. A world without risk is small and safe.’ Under what circumstances would you take a significant risk?

9. After been brought up to believe that sex is only for men to enjoy, Grace becomes liberated. To what extent do the double standards of the 1940s still apply today?

10. In 1949 Simone de Beauvoir wrote the book’s epigraph, ‘One is not born a woman, but becomes one.’ What does this mean to you? How is it reflected in Grace’s life?