Friday Flash Fiction - Plum Lipstick

Plum Lipstick

As I tune into my surroundings, I hear the two young girls next to me talking in staccato French. The blond, slightly less pretty one, is obviously having some sort of problem. She's doing eighty per cent of the talking as her brunette friend listens, leaning in, nodding sagely and occasionally offering condoling murmurings. 

The blond catches me looking at them. 

'What?' she snaps, anger in the small lines set around her mouth. 

'Nothing.' I shrug and turn back to my book. (A Stephen King by the way, totally unputdownable. Nobody builds suspense like he does.)

But like a moth to the flame my eyes keep wandering from the page to her eyes, her face, her lips. She is wearing a pale shade of lipstick, paler no doubt than her natural lip colour. Why any woman would choose to do that is beyond me. Lipstick was invented to make a woman's lips darker, alluding to the fact that she's just been kissed, making men want her more. The paleness doesn't have the reverse effect, but I'm old-fashioned. I prefer darker, richer, plum colours. Tracey wore the perfect colour lipstick. 

Simultaneously the French girls stand up, pushing chairs back with slender tanned legs and leave. The blond turns, throws me a glance that I can't decipher and after slinging her cheap cotton multi-coloured bag over her left shoulder stalks off behind her friend. 

A waitress in a green and black polo shirt quickly clears away the debris of their afternoon rant. She wipes the table haphazardly and disappears back behind the counter. 

I could calculate how long it's been since I last saw Tracey, but I don't want to. I'll just sit here with my half cup of lukewarm black coffee thinking about her. 

Laura Besley

Flash Fiction Diary  

I'm back! Not quite from outer space, but from the non-writing/blogging world. I took three months off over the summer because I knew I wasn't going to have the time. To be honest it was quite liberating for a while, then I started to miss it and then I started to think I couldn't write anymore. I sat down to write for the first time at the end of September and realised within minutes why I absolutely love it. It's also been really nice to hear from people who've mentioned that they've missed my flash fiction, so thanks for those votes of support. 

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

About the book/film

Set in Paris, this book has two main characters: Sarah, a 10-year old Jewish girl and Julia, an American journalist who is researching events of World War II. 

What I think about the BOOK

Fairly early on you can predict the fate of Sarah and her family, but yet reading about it - and all the harrowing details - is not boring. As Julia researches the events of the Vel' d'Hiv to write an article to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of this atrocity, she becomes more and more affected by what she discovers. Coupled with a personal trauma, I found her a very sympathetic character.


I immediately felt pulled in by this narrative. For the first half of the book the two main characters take turns to be the centre of a chapter. This has the effect of not one, but two stories driving the narrative forward and both were equally compelling. I liked the fact that the different chapters, those of Sarah and Julia, were written in different styles and found this book to be a real page-turner.  

What I Think about the FILM

Having read this book about six months ago I recently watched the film (director and screenplay: Gilles Paquet-Brenner). I always like to read the book first to allow my imagination to shape the setting and the characters. This does, more often than not, ruin the film. The best way round this is to wait a while. However, in this case I was not disappointed. The screenplay was phenomenally close to the original book to the point that I don't think anything was omitted or added unnecessarily. 

Kristen Scott Thomas is wonderful in the screen version of Sarah's Key (original title: Elle s'appelait Sarah), which is a predominantly French film. She brings depth and the right level of emotion to the character of Julia. The other actors, including Mélusine Mayance who plays the young Sarah Starzynski, are also brilliant. 


About the author

Tatiana de Rosnay was born in Paris and is of English, French and Russian descent. Since 1992 she has published eight novels in French. Sarah's Key was her first novel written in English and has already been translated into 20 languages.