It's a memoir of Paris in the 1920's and a coming-of-age of Frederick Kohner, author of Gidget. Like all memoirs, you can't take everything as literal fact. Kohner admits: "While the events relating to Kiki are as true as memory will serve me, I have made some necessary changes in the description of persons other than Kiki and in the details of some events."

Fact or fiction, the book is a great description of bohemian Paris, and not a totally flattering one. It certainly has the ring of truth. The author is suitably self-deprecating. He was an outsider, a naive young man, a virgin, a student at the Sorbonne who says, "I was the product of a staid middle-class background, and my only claim to 'Bohemianism' was the ironic fact that Bohemia was my native land."

Kiki, otherwise known as Alice Prin, befriends him. He falls head over heels in love and follows her like a puppy through bars, cafes, bordellos and exotic parties until at last... Well, I won't spoil it.

I came to this book not out of interest in Paris or Kiki but because I'm strangely fascinated by the author Frederick Kohner, a Czechoslovakian Jew with a PhD from the University of Vienna who fled Europe before World War Two. He became a Hollywood screenwriter and the real-life father of the real-life Gidget. I'm simply drawn to the potential psychological train wreck of a father, educated in the heartland of Sigmund Freud, writing a series of novels about the blossoming sexuality of a character inspired by his own daughter. Apparently, the train never ran off the tracks.

This book of course is not about Gidget but is very much about the father's attraction to Kiki, a remarkably liberated woman who rose from poverty to relative fame on the warmth of her spirit, the beauty of her face, and the generosity of her body. I'm happy to have learned about her.

There are similarities between Kiki and Gidget. In a man's world, Kiki mastered the Parisian world of art (and certain artists) the way Gidget mastered the Malibu world of surf (and certain surfers). With 30 years separation Frederick Kohner watched them both — and wrote about their lives. Both Kiki and the fictional Gidget were prolific in their loves. Unlike Kiki, Gidget throughout the original novel and seven sequels comes close, again and again, but remains chaste.

In one of the sequels Kohler may have actually mixed Kiki and Gidget together. It's called Gidget Goes Parisienne. After the 1920's, Kiki's Paris — and Kiki's life — turned dark. I'm almost afraid to find out what happens to Gidget in the Paris of her father's imagination. But of course I'll check it out. ( )