Cover image: Surviving Paris book display
© Entrée to Black Paris

On the evening of September 9, 2026, I attended a delightful event at Le Peloton Studio – Surviving Paris: An Evening Celebrating Community & Culture.

The space quickly filled with people wanting to hear host Aaliyah Heath interview Robin Allison Davis, author of the poignant story about navigating Paris as a single woman with breast cancer.

The evening was organized to celebrate the release of the paperback version of the story, which was published in hard cover and e-book roughly a year before.

Surviving Paris - paperback edition
© Entrée to Black Paris

I purchased a copy and promptly had Davis autograph it, promising to write a review in the coming weeks.

This post fulfills my promise!

Surviving Paris - autographed title page
© Entrée to Black Paris

First of all, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Surviving Paris is an easy read—once I started it, I found it to be fast-paced and crafted with candor and self-depreciating humor.  I immediately felt kinship with the author thanks to her vivid descriptions of the city, which chronicle her marathon walks during the first two pages of the book.  (Entrée to Black Paris' tagline is "Walking is simply the best way to experience Paris.")

But Davis does not wait to introduce the true focus of her story.  The first gut punch of the memoir comes as early as Page 3:

I moved to Paris and all I got was breast cancer.

Davis leaves no stone unturned as she recounts her experiences during her first several months in town.  She touches on some, such as her graduate study at the American University of Paris (AUP), and dives more deeply into others, such as her disappointing job search after earning her degree, the side hustle jobs and no-paying to low-paying internships she accepted as a result of her determination to "make it" in the City of Light, and the landing of her first work contract.  She writes vividly about her efforts to make friends and her dreams of mastering French and finding the love of her life.

Davis' narrative is nonlinear.  She moves from the scheduling of numerous medical exams to determine the nature of the lump she found in her left breast to almost 20 years earlier, when she had her first, and ironically, not at all pleasant, trip to Paris.  She ends this section of the chapter by acknowledging that irony, stating:

It's hard to imagine that the awkward preteen who proclaimed that she hated Paris would grow up to move there as an adult to start a new chapter in her life.  Perhaps this trip was the first indication that I would love a city that, at times, didn't feel like it loved me back.

She then takes readers to her time in New York, where she was a successful, yet eventually unfulfilled journalist who was finally pushed to "leave the nest" when it became evident that she would not be given the promotion for which she had worked so hard.  Revisiting a scenario she had previously researched about pursuing a master's degree in Paris, she decided to apply to AUP and moved here when they accepted her into their Masters of Global Communications program.

Davis pulls no punches about the underbelly of Parisian life.  She is frank about the difficulties of adjusting to French workspaces, finding decent housing, and navigating the bureaucracy—particularly without good command of the language.

While acknowledging the financial advantages the French healthcare system provides compared to that of the U.S., she explains that it is imperative to be in the system to take full advantage of it.  During the first part of her cancer journey, she had not yet received her Carte Vitale (healthcare card) and had to pay for several expensive exams out of pocket.

Aside from the fact that Davis suffered from two forms of breast cancer, with the second being diagnosed two years after she had been declared cancer-free for the first, the most hair-raising aspect of the medical component of her story was the disregard that her surgeon and plastic surgeon had for her clearly stated preferences regarding certain aspects of her treatment.  She finally reclaimed agency over her body when she insisted that her eggs be frozen before undergoing chemo and radiation therapy and succeeded in having this procedure performed.

Throughout her memoir, Davis evokes the importance of her family's support.  Some of the most heartwarming passages relay the long-distance conversations she had with them and the trips they made to France to be by her side during her most difficult moments.

Davis also emphasizes the importance of the community she built and came to rely upon in Paris.  They also supported her during her cancer journey.

Surviving Paris is a story of wonder, pain, and triumph.

Ultimately, it is a love story.

Robin Allison Davis at September 9, 2026 book signing
© Entrée to Black Paris