White and Sorin's Paris isn't exactly like yours or mine: High-fashion designer Azzedine Alaãa lives next door, Julian Schnabel is their host for dinner, and White has the enviable opportunity to introduce another Julian (Barnes) to Tina Turner. ``I haven't read Flaubert's Parrot yet, but I have it on my bedside table,'' she assures the author. This delightful little book is full of such snippets of harmless gossip, often about the not-so- famous people who are indispensable to Parisian life: the concierge, the fruit-and-vegetable man, the cafÇ waiters who serve croissants to Fred, the authors' basset hound. White is, of course, the author of novels (A Boy's Own Story, 1982, etc.) and an award- winning biography of Jean Genet (1993). Sorin was his lover, an architect turned illustrator who died last year of AIDS. They embarked on this joint project during Sorin's illness. It is remarkable, then, how full of life his witty drawings are, and White's text is written in the same spirit, acknowledging but never succumbing to Sorin's impending death. ``Despite the sometimes catty sound of this book, . . . its subtext is love,'' he writes.
