The building0% in

Renée Michel

7 rue de Grenelle

The building

Everything turns on this one address: an elegant Left Bank apartment house of eight grand flats, a courtyard and a private garden, with a concierge's lodge by the entrance. The building is the whole world of the book, and every other point here is a room or a doorstep within a few metres of it.

Setting, throughout

explicitThe novel names the address, 7 rue de Grenelle, as the hôtel particulier that holds nearly all its scenes. The real number 7 sits at the eastern, Saint-Germain end of the street, on the 6th and 7th arrondissement line rather than deep in the 7th; the coordinates mark that real doorway.

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The lodge20% in

Renée Michel

Renée's concierge lodge

The lodge

The concierge lives and works in a small lodge just inside the door, playing the dull caretaker the tenants expect while secretly reading philosophy, watching art films and keeping a hidden inner room of books. Most of her half of the novel is thought and observation from this cramped, deliberately unremarkable space.

Renée's journal, throughout

inferredThe lodge is a real fixture of such a building but has no separate address; it is sited with a small offset at the ground-floor entrance of 7 rue de Grenelle, where a Paris concierge's quarters would sit.

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The Josse flat40% in

Paloma Josse

The Josse family flat

The Josse flat

Twelve-year-old Paloma, the youngest daughter of a well-off political family, narrates from their apartment in the same building. Sharp, disenchanted and quietly planning to end her life on her thirteenth birthday, she fills notebooks with private observations while watching the adults around her.

Paloma's journal, throughout

inferredOne of the building's grand apartments, home to the Josse family; the exact floor is not fixed as a public location, so it is placed with a small upward-and-inward offset within 7 rue de Grenelle.

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The Ozu flat60% in

Renée Michel

Kakuro Ozu's flat

The Ozu flat

A cultured Japanese gentleman moves into a vacated flat and, unlike the other tenants, sees through the concierge's disguise. Their friendship, built over tea and shared taste, is the warm centre of the novel's second half, and much of it unfolds behind his door in the same house.

Renée's journal, later chapters

inferredThe newly arrived tenant's apartment is another of the building's flats; its floor is not a public location, so it is sited with a small offset within 7 rue de Grenelle.

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The quarter80% in

Renée Michel

A café off Saint-Germain

The quarter

Now and then the characters step out of the building into the surrounding streets, to a café table and the small errands of the neighbourhood. The quarter around Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a short walk from the door, stands in for these brief openings onto the wider city.

Various chapters

inferredThe novel's excursions to a nearby café and the shops of the quarter are not tied to a named establishment; this marks the Café de Flore on boulevard Saint-Germain as a representative point a short walk from the building.

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Rue de Grenelle100% in

Paloma Josse

Rue de Grenelle in the 7th

Rue de Grenelle

The address the whole book leans on is a real Paris street, running west from Saint-Germain into the heart of the 7th arrondissement. This point sits a little way along it, at the 18th-century Fountain of the Four Seasons, to fix the elegant quarter the novel keeps just outside its front door.

Setting, the named street

explicitThe street the novel names, rue de Grenelle, is real and runs on into the 7th arrondissement; this marks the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons, its best-known landmark, as a fixed point along the named street. The book does not mention the fountain itself.

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