Customer Reviews

Almost French

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2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am part of a newly started book club. The number of girls attending our dinners vary between 3 and 12, all Australian but me. We had problems choosing a new book last time, but in the end, we settled for "Almost French" by Sarah Turnbull as our third book to read. All member of our book club are foreigners, living in England, so we figured we could and would sympathize with another "expat".

Sarah met Frederic while on a (very late) gap-year in Europe. They had a good time and agreed to meet up in France later. In short, they meet up, fall in love, and Sarah never leaves Paris.

Moving to another country is a massive challenge. You are bound to do all the "Top 10" big no-no's probably within the first 2 weeks. Sarah's portrait of Parisians is hilariously funny, from the snobby shopkeepers, old ladies with their well groomed dogs, uptight cocktail parties where no one really mingles, and unfriendly dinners with Frederic's friends to mention a few.

However, when we discussed this book, we all commented that it was not very balanced - 90% Sarah and 10% the rest. With that ratio, we get to know Sarah quite well. Honestly, she tends to whine quite a bit. We go through the motions with her - lonely, bored and feeling useless and not welcome (I got tired of the author asking over and over and over again "why don't they like me?"). However, her frustration for not being able to speak the language I can sympathize with. I have been in the same situation myself. I studied Spanish in Latin America. Trust me, when you only can speak in present tense with a very limited vocabulary, you sound like an idiot and the conversation dies quickly... But the most pathetic incident is when she realizes that she doesn't actually live in Paris but outside the city limit (defined by the postcode). She makes such a big fuzz about it. I cannot understand the big deal, and how Frederic is putting up with it (and in the end agrees to move) is beyond me...

But there is so much more - what about the relationship, it must have been very difficult for the rest of the people involved, not just Sarah.. Surely, we could have gotten to know the lovely Frederic better, his parents, his friends and the rest of it.

We all fell in love with Frederic. My favorite scenes are when they are pulled over for a minor traffic violation in Paris, and Frederic are trying to pretend to be an Australian. The way he is doing this is to take the jumper off his shoulders and tie it around his waist! I laughed out loud, it is so true! The ever so correct French have their jumpers neatly around their shoulders, and the less formal Australian would just tie them around the waist. The other scene is when Sarah one Saturday morning is running to the bakery to get fresh bread for breakfast. On her way out, Frederic catches a glimpse of her and nearly has a heart attach. "Are you going out like that, wearing your gymnastic pantaloons?" he asks. Sarah completely oblivious to his horror says, "Yeah, I'm just going to the bakery". Frederic says "But, that's not nice for the baker man...".

Say what you like, this book did change my life. I am now much more aware of how I am dressed when I go out, even if I am only getting the newspaper. I even went out and bought a new coat! I swear, I will never again wear sweatpants going to the store. Pants I thought were quite cute earlier are now in the pile "not to be found dead in".

Read the book, have a laugh. I read it in 50 page gulps; it is funny and quite educational when it comes to French etiquette.

Sarah Turnbull, an Australian journalist, takes a year off work to travel. While she is roaming around Europe she meets a Parisian named Frederic, who invites her to visit him in Paris. It sounds like a good idea at the time; she does, although by the time her plane lands at Charles de Gaulle she is beginning to wonder what possessed her to agree to stay with essentially a complete and total stranger.

The visit goes well, though; so well, in fact, that she moves permanently not just to Paris, but into Frederic's apartment. The memoir that follows is a charming and amusing account of two cultures, embodied by two very different people -- the uptight, nattily dressed Frenchman and the casual, easy-going Aussie -- trying to coexist in a small space. He is appalled when she wears her sweat pants to pick up her morning baguette ("But it's not nice for the baker!"); she doesn't understand his sense of humor. This is a happy story that ends with a wedding, but not before the author has myriad battles with the language, countless misunderstandings with the the customs of the place, and some truly homesick spells yearning for Australia.

I found this book laugh-out-loud funny (although I'll admit my reaction may have been a little extreme) because I have spent time in Paris and saw myself very clearly in Ms. Turnbull's language struggles, efforts to get a journalistic career going, and just general befuddlement. I've passed my copy on to some travelling companions who felt the same way I did. But even if you've never been to France, "Almost French" is well-worth reading for the entertainment value alone. The descriptions are apt. The voice is personable and interesting, so much so that by the time you've finished, you'll feel not just that you've visited Paris, but as if you've made a new friend while you were there.

In the mid-1990s, Australian journalist Sarah Turnbull met a French attorney named Frédéric in Bucharest and followed him back to Paris, where they lived together and eventually married. End of a familiar story, right? Wrong. Turnbull, a born reporter, has given her book an apt subtitle: not "Life and a New Love in Paris," but "Love and a New Life in Paris." For, as Turnbull accurately observes, in her case it's the love that brings her to a new life and not vice versa.

Turnbull provides brief glimpses into how love grew between her and "Fred," including descriptions of a huge mirror from which he patiently scraped paint with his thumbnail; for the most part he remains an opaque figure. There is no doubt whatsoever that this idiosyncratic pair are in genuine swing-from-the-gilt mirror love --- after all, she does move to another country for him and he makes enormous and touching attempts to introduce her to his family and his culture --- but Turnbull seems to have made a conscious decision to draw a veil over their love life, both emotional and physical. Her intention is not to describe a romance but to detail her own transformations --- from single woman to spouse, and from Aussie to "almost French."

The "almost" modifying "French" includes a large amount of agonizing awkwardness. The near-universal tourist experience of Parisian rudeness is magnified hundreds of times for someone like Turnbull who chooses to stay on past the usual week or two. "A week might not be long enough," muses the author after her first dinner in Fred's apartment, but she still maintains enough natural savoir-faire to take a breather and travel for several months. After that however, "I return to Paris. The way I see it, there is really no alternative ... if I don't go to France, I might regret it forever."

What makes Turnbull's recounting of her Parisian existence eminently readable is that there is so much she might regret by actually staying. She freely admits that when she returned to Paris and Fred's apartment, she had no friends or family, little language ability, and few job prospects. Her initial setbacks (stacks of rejection letters from editors, dinner party embarrassments, and difficulty in communicating with her new love) lead Turnbull to feeling "confused, guilty even, that I should feel unhappy in a place that looks like paradise."

Being unhappy away from familiar things is an age-old theme for females who follow their hearts to new lands --- but while the theme is ancient, Turnbull isn't. She is a thoroughly modern woman whose frustrations spur her on to find solutions. Before long she has entered a prestigious journalism program, encouraged Fred to buy a new apartment in the Montorgueil district, and actually learned to tolerate the suffocatingly hidebound atmosphere of Fred's provincial family seat at Baincthun.

Unlike Adam Gopnik's PARIS TO THE MOON, in which author, wife and child are all expatriates who will return home at some point (however reluctantly), ALMOST FRENCH is a book that clearly presages a sequel (perhaps WHOLLY FRENCH) --- or does it? One of the freshest things about Turnbull's great adventure is that, while she wholeheartedly throws herself into loving and living in a different country, she never abandons the self she created for the nearly thirty years before coming to France.

In the last chapter, after their marriage, Turnbull reflects on the adventure that is just beginning. While it is clear that Sarah and Fred have many adventures to come, it is equally clear that she may never be completely French. Vive la différence!

--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick from Bookreporter.com

What I loved about this book was voice of the writer in that you got the good and the bad about living in Paris. It didn't matter whether she was Australian -- or American -- or Russian. Her honesty was unquestionably refreshing when you look at so many of the -- frankly -- turgid and non-realistic books that are out there about (mostly) Americans adapting to foreign countries. Alice Steinbach, a Baltimore-based Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, wrote one that I thought was borderline offensive and I never cared for Frances Mayes' tales either. Just so you know where I stand:)) They both write in a fairy-tail like manner which is a turnoff. Turnbull tells it like it is and between the lines you can really feel her loneliness.

I enjoyed the book so much I sent a copy to a good friend (American) who lived in Paris, now lives in London, hates it, and misses Paris with all her heart (she didn't have the assimilation problem that Turnbull had but I think she might be unusual in that way!).

In a personal sense, I also identified with Turnbull's challenges. I'm a fairly recent bride of a man from Finland...and the language is even more difficult than French (it's not even remotely a part of the romance languages). His family only speaks Finnish. They are warm and welcoming but there's that limit (we can't communicate). I particularly identified with her struggles of being "invisible" (the chair concept about which she was advised did not help me either). One afternoon at a lunch party I felt as if I had regressed to being five years old -- and included at a dinner party given by my parents where I really didn't understand a word of the conversation and wondered why I was there! Well, now I know...but still.

Yes, I do wish I'd gotten more of a sense of why she was giving so much up to be in Paris...the relationship details were too sketchy and that would have made the story really...evocative. But I still loved it...and it was a pleasure, not to mention an eye-opener, to read.

Does a love affair with a lovely Parisian sound like heaven? In Sarah Turnbull's charming memoir, Almost French, it clearly wasn't the pie-in-the-sky experience she'd hoped for. Her lover's friends don't exactly welcome her and no matter how hard she tries, Sarah always seems to be committing some social gaffe. Through Turnbull's prose, we get a funny and delightful look at her experience of living among the French, and what it's like to be Almost French...almost, but not quite.

A charming story concerning an Australian journalist's experiences adapting to living with her French boyfriend in Paris. Her easy-to-read writing is filed with poignent and often funny anecdotes, interspersed with wry commentary on the cultural differences that separate Anglo-Saxons from Gallic citizens. Overall, an entertaining read. I highly recommend it!

I loved Sarah Turnbull's Almost French. She seemlessly turns her hand from journalism to writing personal anecdotes in the first person. Her style is easy to follow and my eyes seemed to fly through the book. I don't quite understand why so many people want to know more about Frederick. This is a book about Sarah and her personal journey from Sydney to Paris. I think if there was more about Frederick it would have detracted from the true plot. The book has given me courage to follow my heart. Sarah followed hers to Paris and this book maps her (often hilarious and often upsetting) journey. I particularly enjoyed the chapters when Frederick was in Australia, it was enlightening to see my own city (which I thought of as beautiful and laid back) from the view of a Frenchman.
This is a book i have read a number of times and have reommended to many.

Turnbull takes every day life events and turns them into a witty and inspiring tale. A must read for anyone living overseas or just if you fantasize about it.

This book is so true! I also live in Europe, and a lot of things in the book hold true for Europeans, not just the French. Sarah Turnbull tells both the highs and lows of living in France. I learned a few things from the book too, for example, how to select cheese, fish, and a few dishes. Also, I have always wondered why French women are always dressed in their "Sunday Best" clothing when I see them in a cafe' or in the supermarket. Now, I know. Wonderful book, very light hearted and informative.

This is a rare gem. A wonderfully scripted book with the appropriate amount of wit and humuor thrown in, I was hoping for more when I finished reading it. Sarah Turnbull has given us an intimate amount of how she adapts to city life in France. It is a refreshing account of life in a foreign culture. Unlike books by Peter Mayle, Carole Drinkwater which tend to be stories of country living, this book give a glimpse into city life which is what many of us are familiar with. One can also learn more about the French way of thinking (told with extreme wit and sometimes, exasperation), living, communicating and dealing with bureacracy. I highly recommend this book to all who want to know the French a little more, to find out how a girl in her twenties mustered up the courage to stay with a Frenchman she barely knew during her gap year and finally settled down for good in this foreign land that is more than half the globe away from her native Australian home and how she adapted and became "almost french", all amid a hilarious read. I caught myself chuckling away in a cafe and the subway while reading this book. Of course, no one then understood why and could have labelled me crazy, but only if they knew what a book "Almost French" is.