I found this book to be pretentious and shallow. Parts of it were beautifully written, but the plot meandered all over the place and nothing was resolved at the end. All the characters were selfish and unlikable and their motivations were not clear to me.

Being an American woman who has felt the sweet pain of an unrequited love affair with Paris, I found this book utterly delightful. I could relate to the authors struggle with the language, cultural differences and her infatuation with all things French, from the wine to the food to the French love of discord.
The plot involves (the protagonist) Izabelles sister, Roxy, a poet who has left her American family in Santa Barbara CA to make her life in Paris, married to a French painter whose family is connected and well heeled. The painter has left a very pregnant Roxy and their young daughter to run off with a married woman. Enter Izabelle, a woman in her early 20's who has not yet settled on a path for her life. Her role is to help Roxy navigate the last trimesters of pregnancy, the emotionally wrought landscape of marriage/separation/divorce and to babysit.
Izabelle picks up a handful of odd jobs, introduces a host of interesting and well drawn characters, her employers, her lovers and the family Roxy inherited through her marriage. She takes us to concerts, dinners, through the streets of Paris and in a series of unexpected plot twists to a conclusion that begs for another book!

2.5. skończyłam. Było kilka rzeczy ktore mnie zainteresowaly ale w sumie to w ogóle się nie zaangazowalam.(chcialam wiecej romansu z hot, 70letnim wujem, a wuj jak juz sie pojawil raz na ruski rok był irytujacy i mysoginistic).

This is fabulous. I think this is the kind of book Jane Austen would write if she’d been writing in the 1990s, full of sharp cultural observations, family insights, long character arcs. It’s funny and charming and has some depth at the same time. Loved it.

I should also mention I only know about this book because of the “Sentimental Garbage” podcast, which is also fabulous.

I loved this book; I thought it was great mindless fiction. I enjoyed the peep-show view of living in France through her eyes. The whole Eiffel Tower drama was a bit silly, but what the heck?


Oh, and whatever you do...DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE. Ugh, ralph and horridness.

Bei diesem Buch kann man mal wieder sehen, was Titel und Umschlag so anrichten können ;-) Was aussieht wie ein typischer Chicklit-Roman ist tatsächlich eine amüsante Familiengeschichte, die ihren Unterhaltungswert aus der Gegenüberstellung der französischen und der amerikanischen Lebensart bezieht.
Die junge aus Kalifornien kommende Isabel reist nach Paris, um dort ihrer Stiefschwester Roxy zur Seite zu stehen, die ihr zweites Kind erwartet. Doch statt eines erholsamen Frankreichurlaubes mit ein bisschen Babysitting gerät sie mitten hinein in die etwas chaotischen Familienbeziehungen ihrer Stiefschwester. Deren französischer Ehemann hat sie unmittelbar vor Isabels Ankunft verlassen, da er die Liebe seines Lebens gefunden hat, was seine Familie jedoch nicht daran hindert, die gemeinsamen Gepflogenheiten aufrechtzuhalten und das Vorgefallene diskret zu ignorieren. Isabel, neugierig und offen, registriert voller Interesse die unterschiedlichen Verhaltens- und Lebensweisen und lässt uns Lesende bis in ihr eigenes Liebesleben hinein (natürlich mit einem Franzosen!) daran teilhaben. Es geht um Gütertrennung, Geld, Essen (naturellement ;-)), Kunst, die Liebe und auch um den schlichten Alltag. Ein rundum schönes, unterhaltsames Buch, dass einem nicht nur die Franzosen sondern auch die Amerikaner näher bringt. Und manchmal, manchmal sind sie auch gar nichts so weit voneinander entfernt.
Übrigens, das Ganze wurde 2003 unter dem Titel 'Eine Affäre in Paris' mit Kate Hudson und Naomi Watts in den Hauptrollen verfilmt. Wobei der Schluss im Film offenbar wesentlich theatralischer ist als im Buch.

This book is rich in generalized but witty observations about French culture from an American perspective. I picked up the book because I had heard could learn from Johnson's treatment of the French, and I did enjoy it in some respects. Ultimately, though, the narrative is superficial, as are all the characters, and while I had plenty of laughs while reading this, I experienced little intellectual stimulation or fulfillment and outright frustration and disgust at the over-the-top final conclusion.

The entire premise of the book seems to be a binary analysis - a compare/contrast exercise (in America we do this. In France they do that). Unfortunately, there were several problems along the way. One is that to Isabel Walker, the narrator, "America" seems to equate to "Santa Barbara," which is where she's from. As I'm from New York, many of the American observations didn't "ring true" to me. Another is that while the novel has a far reach in terms of subject matter and content, it is all skimmed along the surface, nothing is penetrated in any kind of depth. The story is fast-moving, which pulls you along, but when you put the book down, you realize how little has actually happened. Isabel's insecurities, desires, and ability to exasperate and frustrate her family are all referenced but not set up, foreshadowed, realized or even fully explored. There are completely unnecessary characters who are introduced and not followed up on, until they're needed and dropped back on the page for unnecessary plot twists. The recurring discussion of the Bosnian War, intended to illustrate Isabel's new "life of the mind" while living in France, is superficial and chatty.

There are unfinished and unrealized spots throughout the book: for instance, why does Gennie, the 3-year-old, never act out or assert herself in the entire 300 pages, despite the stress and distress of her mother and aunt? She simply goes to the creche and comes back and every once in a while holds someone's hand. This book very nearly but not completely evokes the world of its imagining.While some aspects of Isabel's affair with an older man are sensitively handled, the family drama of both her family and her sister's in-laws successfully portrayed as reducing each character to a contextualized puppet, and the literary tradition of American women corrupted by European men effectively utilized, the over-the-top plot twists at the end ruined any previous enjoyment of the book I had experienced. Here are the worst aspects of the book exponentially increased.

This could have been a sensitive book about a family experiencing a divorce and the complications international marriages bring to divorce proceedings, but instead, in the last scenes, it turns into a pseudo-thriller with unbelievable events written rather poorly. I felt shoddy craftmanship coming into play here - while the book was lurching along, making up for in some spots what it lacked in others, by the end, the skill to finish strong seemed to be lacking, and cheap tricks were used instead.

There's SO much going on in this book. In the first half it's a funny comedy of manners about an American getting mixed up with Parisian society, and it's great. Then it does an abrupt about-face and turns into a story of mental health, a weird love affair, murder, a painting, and a weird little side-plot about stolen furniture that never gets properly resolved.

In short, there's way too much going on. It reads like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be, the various plots almost seeming like separate novels mushed together.

It's best in the first half when it reads purely as a comedy of manners. Then it gets very muddled. It doesn't quite deserve the shockingly low rating it has, but it also doesn't quite justify lots higher by the end.

Johnson's keen focus on Americans in Paris is illuminating. I loved the culture clash, as well as the unexpectedness of where she takes you in this book. There's nothing predictable about her plot.

I was a bit disappointed in where Johnson leaves her young heroine, Isabel Walker, seemingly just as driftless and aimless as before. In a book of character development, I wanted her to learn just a little more and grow more as a person.

Dull, boring, blah.

Boring fluff

I read this while on vacation in Prauge and it had some fascinating things to say about the way Americans behave in Europe. Very interesting to read while I was in that particular role.