Après-Midi Recap

Zoom has become our “meeting place” during confinement and while it’s not perfect, it sure beats being so far away from one another. It was the new “abnormal,” as one of my close friends called it —holding our monthly coffee gathering on Zoom instead of live and in-person upstairs at the Café de la Mairie as we have since 2003. This time, I never left home, barely left my desk chair, and there we were, more than 100 of our readers anxious to hear and see author David Downie on their computer screens, phones or other smart devices. What an amazing world we live in, if not “abnormal!”

David is a native San Franciscan who moved to Paris in the mid-1980s and now divides his time between France and Italy. His travel, food, and arts features have appeared in over 50 print magazines and newspapers worldwide and on dozens of websites. From his home in Italy, he talked about his last published novel, The Gardener of Eden, “A haunting and luminous novel that explores the dark secrets lurking beneath the stunning natural beauty of a dying timber town.” (Source: Good Reads) Having spoken at Après-Midi on many occasions in the past to present his books, of which there are many—15 (!)—he has a new novel scheduled to be on the bookstore shelves in May of 2021 to which we can look forward: Red Riviera.

The large turn-out, even with many on the West Coast of the U.S. who were on the meeting at 6 a.m., exemplifies the tremendous interest in hearing David speak about his work. He enlightened us all by reading a few passages of this new novel that takes a “sinister turn when he [James] and a local teenager make a gruesome discovery, which forces him to reckon with the ghosts of his past—and the dangers of the present.” (Source: Amazon) We saw a lot of familiar faces—friends of Après-Midi—and some fresh ones just discovering our monthly coffee gathering…this time without the coffee!

For those of you who missed the event, or if you want a replay, all is not lost. You can watch it in its entirety here on Vimeo.

In attendance, were…as best as we can surmise from their screen names…