I couldn't get through it. I started it, and gave up somewhere. Just didn't enjoy it.

Le Dissapointment

This was really very poorly written. All you really need to know is that there is an unresolved and very boring subplot involving a soup tureen. Paris has inspired many books. Pick another one. Nothing to see here.

Picked it up because the author was born in Moline, IL and the book was a National Book Award Finalist. I found it tedious; the lack of something to read on my train ride is the only reason I made it to the end. I didn't care about any of the characters enough to want to know how it ended.

it was very easy to read and very eh. i guess i never read any of the traditional euro-transnational ex-pat books, i had nothing to compare it to. well i read the sun also rises, but don't remember it much as an expat book as much as a post war book. It is incomparable to my own experience of having been transnational to Asia and as an american person of color vs a white american. oh and this book uses the word oriental to describe a passing person. booo. quite a few parts of it made me uncomfortable with its self-absorption and insular feelings. I guess that it is the payoff of reading something that is not sad and instead just amusing.

This second novel of Johnson's which I have read traces the adventures of Isabel Walker, an attractive young film school drop out who travels to France to help her sister during her second pregnancy. During the course of her stay in France her sister's husband engages in a romantic liason with a married woman and leaves her. As their divorce procedes Isabel finds herself becomming the mistress to her sisters Uncle in law. Though the lives of these women sound lke a soap opera Johnson blends this into a realistic adventure. The work is yet another interesting exploration of an american abroad while still developing characters and advancing an entertaining plot.
There are many similarities between this novel and the first Johnson work I read, Persian nights. In both an american female whose personal life is in some disarray finds herself in a foreign land rapidly in the midst of new sexual realtionships while the backdrop of her new cultural setting allows Johnson to comment on being american and saying something about the foreign culture that the protagonist is found in.

Le Divorce by Diane Johnson
Novel
1998
A Plume book Published by The Penguin Group

Ugh
Ok, Let me start by saying that I LOVE chicklit...that easy to read beach bag "garbage TV" type of read at times and this is exactly what I expected going in. But can I also say that I wonder what generation this woman lives in? This utterly racist bitch?
Through out the book this chick is "afraid of black people" because the "ones they know in California" rob and rape and kill...and oh dear lord should she meet a black person that's not like that in civilized fucking France!

If the girl had been raised in Compton...maybe so (and even I've spent plenty of time working in realestate in Compton with not a single issue.) But she was raised in an area of California and went to a college where this isn't the case. She likely never saw a "thug" in her life. Herextent of African-American people is fully obviously from bad movies. Now I can see having put in this racial tension rather than leaving it out as it was completely useless to the story BUT...it could have been done in a much more real life way. As I know at her film school she knew at least one geeky black kid which should have been her basis of black people altogether. And likely wore a frickin argyle sweater. Santa Barbara is made to sound heathenish altogether through-out the book from the "blacks" to the comparison of the in-law's in France. Then on top of the majorly politically incorrect (for which I don't give a damned about, just do it right) is several mentions of the "retarded boy" out of the blue for no good reason of the story as well...why? What did that do to boost your story? And no actual description, he just sits there doing nothing...there isn't a scene of watching the young boy chasing pigeons who runs up to her, trying to share with her the bread crumbs he'd been feeding to the pigeons and then when seeing his face realizes he's...his mother called him away, apologizing as mum's do for him bothering her."

There are many spots in the book that have me want to reel the author in on real life and ...today's century. She uses phrases like "string them together so that they fizz" from the girl who isn't into poetry at all at the time so she simply wouldn't do much but look down at her sisters poetry as a joke but certainly wouldn't speak of her sisters poetry the way she does "you wouldn't have thought her thoughts would be odd and complicated." Right there are about too many things wrong with that line to even begin with. I suggest a good read of Stephen King's On Writing for dialog.

The dialog falls flat...so flat...this twenty something year old educated (even if dropped out) raised upper middle class woman speaks like a sulky goth fuck the world fourteen year old. But an older man sleeps with her and enjoys her company and intellectual conversation? Pfft. There are so many times while reading that I wanted to throttle the author because she obviously doesn't breath the oxygen she's given freely in life. And sex is "making it"? really? Really?!

Then to write French without an English translate (See An Italian Affair, well done) just had me not getting half the book (ok, well, I understood it but many would not).


The job of narrating is done horribly...you can do this narrating through out an entire book however do it right...reel me into the story not just a simple flat falling step by step "then they did this then they did that, then the end." Then mixing completely flat narrating with valley girl talk mixed with the odd overly floral speech leaves me punching my pillow. It was like she was reading a Jane Austin novel during the writing but sitting next to a valley girl air head on the bus and then top it off with the woman having zero personality herself because not a damned drop of it bled into these pages.

What I did love were the quotes that opened each chapter, by Pascal, Hugo and Adolphe among others.

I have never been to Paris or anywhere in France for that matter. This book took me there!!! I also enjoyed the journey with the two main characters of Isabel and Roxy. Isabel was naive and a bit self absorbed. Roxy was timid and depressed but evolving into something more beautiful. It wasn't deep or profound in any way but it was a great escape book! Something to read on a rainy weekend...

I picked up the book because I liked the movie, and reading the book I was impressed that they were able to turn it into a movie using the basic premises, but the book is another world in terms of depth. Mostly from Isabel's point of view, it delves into what it means to be family, what it means to live in another country, how nationality brings people together and forces them apart when it's time to take sides. I thought it was a good book, but it's hard to say why. May have some connections to Henry James novels.

I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I knew French. All the untranslated phrases really drove me crazy. As it is, I think this may be one of the few cases where I enjoyed the movie more than the book.

Meh. It started fairly well, but finishing the book was exhausting. It didn't really seem like the main character grew at all. I normally love this sort of book, I eat up chick lit/memoir-like reads, but usually the narrative of these books builds to some major growth or revelation. This one just fell flat for me.

I actually couldn't finish this one I found it so annoying, and that never happens.