Emmy Award winning journalist and television producer, Robin Allison Davis moved to Paris after her ten year television career, to follow her dream of a more international career. She finds a job and an apartment. And a lump in one of her breasts. When she gets it checked, a true cancer diagnosis nightmare starts. Her cancer is treated, but apparently it wasn't really cured, and has to get treated a second time, just as the Covid-19 pandemic also breaks out, and beside battling her cancer, surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, she also has to self-isolate to prevent getting even more ill. And then there are the side effects of the chemotherapy, losing on of her breast an the reconstruction that goes wrong, terrible itch attacks, and the toxic-positivity comments of people around her ('if you stay positive, you can win it from cancer..') and the French bureaucratic health insurance system she has to deal with.
But luckily she also finds a new friends community in Paris, with true friends that are beside her during the therapy, especially when her family from the USA can't visit because of the lockdowns.
Surviving Paris is a moving and inspiring memoir. I found it a very open and honest memoir that I think is the best memoir that came out this year. Robin writes it in a beautiful and captivating way, as a reader it is difficult to put this book away. As someone with a chronic kidney illness, I also recognized the toxic positivity people drop on you; ''Stay positive, then you win over your illness'' for example, is something I hear also frequently and I loved it that Robin mentioned this topic in this book. Robin describes everything in great detail, life as an American in Paris, the bureacratic French system, the side effects of her treatments, the search for new apartments when her Parisian landlords decide to sell her apartment, everything. I loved reading her memoir, and you can only wish as a a reader that Robin will stay cancer-free forever. This is truly one of the very best memoirs of 2025, and I recommend reading it!
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