Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
by Sarah Turnbull
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sarah TurnbullEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-08-03
ISBN: 1592400825
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Gotham
Book Reviews of Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
Book Review: Almost French! Not so Sure!
Summary: 1 Stars
The first time I came to visit Australia, this book was a big hit. Obviously because I am French and my husband Australian, people gave it to us. It was 6 years ago. Back in France I read it curious to see my country being described by one of my husband's compatriots.
Unfortunately, not only this book was a big deception regarding its style or lack of it but I was getting annoyed and frustrated. In fact, I thought with a journalist background, the author, Sarah Turnbull, would have been more incline to go beyond the usual stereotypes. On the contrary, her book is filled with articles of hers, describing the French bourgeois, having expensive wardrobe and $2000 pet dogs. Owners, of 400 years old farm, people dancing rock in line, frustrated woman who cannot dare to laugh, etc.
I thought I was taking it too personally and waited 6 years to read it again, but now that I am living in Australia I can understand why this book has this effect on me. I see how the French lifestyle is imagined in Australia, and I have to say distorted. But for a journalist living in France, I find incredible that Sarah cannot or doesn't dare to deepen her knowledge about French and the French culture. It is a superficial, badly written book about a capricious girl's experience in Paris. In a way it is very Australian as she doesn't try to go beyond the generics. All French are the same from one extreme to another, all French are unhappy and frustrated, all French are old (no mention of youth in her book!), all French are tied with conventions. A part from one trip in the centre of France and her regular trips in the North, never does she mention going and travelling around France, meeting other people that her bourgeois surrounding. Never does she mention, that France is NOT Paris.
But let me tell you that all French are NOT Parisians, that 4 millions live in the centre of Paris but 56 millions lives all around France. Not everyone is from a bourgeois' background and has a lawyer for boyfriend to answer to every caprice the girlfriend might have. Most of the people in France laugh loud (and when I do so here in Sydney I am badly looked at!), drink a lot, dance randomly, enjoy life, love to share with others, are curious minded and love to learn about others' experiences and culture, furthermore, love to meet new people.
This time I am not going to finish the book. I know very well how she described becoming the ones she once disliked deeply.
I am now a languages teacher in Australia and among others languages teacher I am trying to fight stereotypes. For me, it is the cause of too many misconceptions and misunderstandings and above all, the cause for a lack of interests about others in Australia. When people mention this book as an example of a French experience, I cannot stop myself of imaging a capricious little girl who gets easily frustrated when her wishes are not granted. Definitely, this book is not the work of a woman who embraces her new experience with a wide open eyes.
This book is NOT a good and truthful description of the French and their cultures.
I just want to mention that my Australian husband read the book 6 years ago and got really shocked by the degree of superficiality. I may say, we have the same idea about the book.
Summary of Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
A delightful, fresh twist on the travel memoir, Almost French takes us on a tour that is fraught with culture clashes but rife with deadpan humor.Sarah Turnbull's stint in Paris was only supposed to last a week. Chance had brought Sarah and Fr?d?ric together in Bucharest, and on impulse she decides to take him up on his offer to visit him in the world's most romantic city. Sacrificing Vegemite for vichyssoise, the feisty journalist does her best to fit in, although her conversation, her laugh, and even her wardrobe advertise her foreign status.
But as she navigates the highs and lows of this strange new world, from life in a bustling quartier and surviving Parisian dinner parties to covering haute couture fashion shows and discovering the paradoxes of French culture, little by little Sarah falls under its spell: maddening, mysterious, and charged with that French specialty-seduction.
".a love song to Paris and France, yes, but a love song in a minor key.Sarah Turnbull seems to have gotten a lot closer to the real thing than most of us who will always be on the outside looking in..."
--Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
".jewels of insight-and the book shines with them-make Almost French a worthy read. Turnbull's story will entertain, and edify, both armchair travelers and those of us nutty enough to try living here."
--Joe Ray, The Boston Globe
"Turnbull's memoir is a charming, insightful meditation."
--USA Today
".full of honest ups and downs.its explorations of the "cultural quicksand" Turnbull gradually adapts to are fascinating. I hope to visit Paris one day, and am grateful to learn so many ways to avoid being an ugly American."
--Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer
"You'll love this true story of a woman who left her life behind for a sexy foreigner."
--Cosmopolitan
"Anyone who finds herself in a situation like Turnbull's.will be luckier; she'll have Turnbull's warm, clear prose to soothe frayed nerves."
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