I'm not finished yet, but so far, this has been a great disappointment.

I had to stop reading this book because it was sooooo bad! I have never done this before.

DNF'd @ p. 52

I tried with Le Divorce by Diane Johnson, but I quickly realized that I just wasn't interested in sitting through all 309 pages of this book.

Many friends, knowing I used to live in France and love anything written about France, especially dealing with expats, told me to read Le Divorce. It was such a hit that I expected it to be great but it was so insipid and the characters are all stereotypes and so poorly drawn that it was totally absurd and I was actually annoyed at myself for wasting time reading it all the way through.

Do not judge this book by its cover. The movie was terrible, the book is fantastic. It's very astute, well-formed, and has a GRE level vocabulary (I had to start a notebook of new words). Diane Johnson's turns of phrase made me swoon.

I love a good comedy of manners and Diane Johnson is the best we have in this genre at the moment. This is part of a trilogy (the other volumes are Le Mariage and L'Affaire) that pits upper-middle class Americans against their French counterparts. Smart, witty and beautifully observed and written. I will read anything she writes.

At first impression this book fascinated me, as the narrator's experience of Paris overlaps broadly with my own. It's the small details and the spark of recognition they ignite - for instance, there's nothing like listening to a French person speak your own (American) language with, to be sure, a French accent, but add to that the disorienting British filter that they picked up when they were learning English. (Which language *is* this?) Cheers to the author for making those essential trivialities hit home.

As I got deeper into Le Divorce, though, I started to notice that the narrator and I had drawn very different conclusions from the same city. One often hears the French stereotyped as snobs, and the book seems to agree - in fact, the narrator seems to enjoy applying stereotypes to people, and to her credit, she does it in a juicy way. In my own experience I came away with a different feeling. The French I met weren't snobs; they just lived by a different set of cultural rules. Let's not forget, it's the visitor's job to understand.

Then I realized that while the French characters in Le Divorce have their faults - big ones - the narrator is the one who's being snobbish. Her vague disdain tricks you for a while. You think it's coming from what you're looking at; then you realize it's actually in the lens you're looking through. Isabel lumps people into groups, is put off by the French, gets annoyed by her sister, and maintains a habit of looking down on herself. It's subtle, but it pervades the book.

A few other critiques: contradictions are frequent. "Roxy loves going to flea markets." Two pages later: "Roxy despises flea markets." Is it one or the other, Isabel, or both? I must add that the narrative takes every opportunity to muse off on detours with the aimlessness of daily living. When Carl was lending me the book, he said, "It's kind of just... life." It follows the same circles of interest and non-interest that characterize the mundane. Some things build the story, others don't. I won't fault it for that - being too real - still, the story could have hung together better. And while it's an interesting concept, I'm getting sick of hearing about "the mysterious toxins of pregnancy."

Nevertheless, Le Divorce is an interesting read. I was happy to plug on through to the end, and I couldn't put it down at the climax. It would have been nice to have seen an answer to the question we started with: What is Isabel going to do with her life? I left our heroine feeling that she's a step or two closer to knowing who she wants to be; that's about all we get. She'll probably keep living abroad, growing into the person she's started to become in France, defining herself. Probably without the monsieur.

Final impression? I still can't explain why we needed to ponder the ethics of foie gras and the feeding of geese in the *last paragraph,* right in the middle of all those poignant questions we were being left with. Not sure how that helps to tie everything together. Not sure I'm supposed to ask.

I really enjoyed this witty modern comedy of manners. It reminded me of a Neil Simon play—could envision the characters as they interact. I also liked the format of the novel—short chapters with quotes from famous French writers as introductions.

I enjoyed it for the Parisian flavor and complex characters, but I could have done well without the disgusting affair details btwn Isabel and her Septuagenarian lover (which doesn't jive with the rest of her tone throughout the rest of the book,) and the slightly overly-dramatic elements. It would have been more suited to be a "lighter read." By toying with more traumatic/grotesque elements, it kind of became one of those books you keep reading HOPING it will get better and make up for its random dramatic transgressions. Does it pick up? Yes. But mainly the setting of the story is what saves this read.

I was surprised at how much I liked this book. On the surface, it looks like a fluffy, light, beach read. It turns out to be an interesting tale of the juxtaposition of American and French cultures. And when I discovered that Ms. Johnson has been nominated for a Pulitzer, I wasn't at all surprised. He books ARE that good, and well worth reading. Call it "Literary Chick Lit", and you'll have a pretty good idea where to categorize this book.

This book completely lacked character depth and was completely plot driven. Johnson gave herself a wonderful opportunity to explore the cultural differences between Americans and Frenchmen, but totally missed the mark by creating too many characters with too many questionable plot lines. She assumes the reader understands French (which not everyone does), and her passages in French are not always accompanied by contextual clues as to the meaning.

Finally, her character is visiting France, having grown up in Santa Barbara, California. Johnson could have at least looked at a map of Santa Barbara to get some street names correct. Her descriptions of Santa Barbara are not accurate, and these inaccuracies destroy the credibility of not only her story, but her painfully shallow main character, Isabel.

What a shame! Santa Barbara and Paris are two of the most beautiful cities in the world, with great potential for sights and smells and tastes to leap from the pages into the reader's mind. Instead, Johnson chose to create a shallow, trite story lacking depth, compassion, and credibility.

I suppose the author expected the reader to have a French dictionary nearby or perhaps the French parts of the text were unimportant to the story? If the French was important, it should have been translated. If unimportant, then why include it at all?