I just finished reading a nice book, a noir first from a relatively unknown new French author with an English name, Julia Deck. Book title is Viviane Élisabeth Fauville (in english, it’s Viviane) and it’s a “beautiful” story of the crime –of all things– of a psychoanalyst by the hand of his patient Viviane. Mapping a NovelIt’s all set in Paris, gourgeously written and translated (my version is in Italian). Here is the Goodreads link. The beginnings of the book are really magnificent:

Vous êtes Viviane Élisabeth Fauville. Vous avez quarante-deux ans, une enfant, un mari, mais il vient de vous quitter. Et puis hier, vous avez tué votre psychanalyste. Vous auriez sans doute mieux fait de vous abstenir. Heureusement, je suis là pour reprendre la situation en main.

Now, of course, besides the pleasure of reading it, this short novel actually made me salivate around the idea of going back to Paris and walk the same walks of Viviane. I thus opened Google Earth and saw the more or less familiar streets and places the protagonist Viviane walks through. Then I remembered some website where I could actually create a map of places from a simple batch list.

Easier done than said. I found the site batchgeo.com, compiled a simple comma-separated-values table from one itinerary Viviane walks while shadowing her husband. The data are like this:

Place, City, Country
rue des Ecoles, Paris, France
rue Linné, Paris, France
rue des Arenes, Paris, France
rue Monge, Paris, France
rue de Navarre, Paris, France
place Saint Medard, Paris, France
rue des Carmes, Paris, France
rue Pot de Fer, Paris, France
rue du Roi de Sicile, Paris, France
pont Saint Michel, Paris, France
Conciergerie, Paris, France

Then of course, I pushed a button, and voilá, the map was produced under my eyes. Another magique trick of the (open) Web!!

Even more intriguing, I can embed the live map into WordPress, like down here! Vive la liberté!

 

View Viviane in a full screen map

Antonio Vantaggiato
av@qmail.com