Customer Reviews

Foreign Tongue: A Novel of Life and Love in Paris

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

"Foreign Tongue" is the story of a young woman, Anna, who has both American and French citizenship. She has left California for Paris to nurse a broken heart. While there, she finds work translating an erotic novel, which ushers her into literary circles and possibly, the arms of a new lover. It may sound lighthearted, but as its layers unfold, it becomes a chiaroscuro of suspense, passion, intellect and rich imagery.

READ THIS BOOK!! It's so good that I had to force myself to STOP reading it because then it would be over! I've sent copies to several friends so we can talk (and talk and talk) about it.

Vanina Marsot, the author, is fearless. She is willing to lay herself open, to allow herself to be exposed, as the best of actors do. At the same time, she is brilliant and worldly. This combination makes the book at once raw and sophisticated.

It's truly a perfect book, satisfying one fully in mind, soul, heart and libido in the way that Thai spices are meant to touch all the taste buds. The discussions on language link the two cultures together, yet show their fascinating differences, providing food for the mind. The soul is in the friendships, the characters and how Anna goes deep to find connection, clarity and meaning. The heart is engaged by the love that Anna has for her friends, her lovers, her city; for words and language and for the cultural duality inside of her. She is both part of the two cultures, yet apart, and her aloneness tugs at one's heart. Then there's the libido! She surrenders herself again to love with such joy. Her Parisian lover is described so sensuously that you can actually breathe in his smell. There's a wonderful contrast between the luscious descriptions of sex and love and the almost clinical musings on the meanings and sounds of sexual terms and how they must be translated.

The writing floored me. I had to tag some of the descriptions. Like the French confections that Anna delights in, the descriptions of which made me salivate, I need to return for another taste! Here's one: "My thoughts went to Timothy, the way a tongue searches out a painful tooth, stupidly and relentlessly." Another describes how the chairs in a picture window are "lit like a Hurrell model". In another, Marsot notes how the afternoon light casts "spindly Giacometti shadows behind the pedestrians." That's probably my favorite. Marsot somehow achieves a literary voice that is both economic and rich.

It MUST become a movie because it is begging to live visually. The food, the places, the clothing that the characters wear -- it is all so vibrant. Like New York is for "Sex and the City", Paris is a main character for "Foreign Tongue". Yet in "Foreign Tongue", it is even more so, because Paris is humanized, made accessible. SATC did that in the early years, back when the clothes came from boutiques. When the designer labels started popping out all over, it lost some of that, some of its vulnerability.

The characters are perfectly drawn. They are unique, piquing our interest, yet recognizable, so you want to move in closer.

Enjoy this multi-layered mille-feuilles of a book!

As a former Paris bureau chief for Newsweek who never left the place
it was a great pleasure for me to read a book that gets it just right on the French, their language, their culture and lifestyle, their charm and their foibles and how all that plays with American counterparts. Vanina
Marsot has written an insightful and funny book. She knows Paris inside out. If you read one book on France this year, read this one.

A provocative romp! An unexpected trip to Paris! Meeting interesting new people and remembering what single love felt like. Reading Foreign Tongue was all of this and more for me - a septuagenarian. And then the chance to enjoy the nuances of the language I used to speak and know so well. It was plainly and simply a great surprise.
The book was also full of intrigue and interesting insights and metaphors, interweaving two stories very skillfully. I really didn't want it to end.[ASIN:0061673668 Foreign Tongue:A Novel of Life and Love in Paris]

The Review


One of my favorite lines in the book is:

"Heartbreak in French is chagrin d'amour. It means a disappointment in love, and it's like food poisoning: everyone knows what it is and sympathizes. it's probably covered under the state's socialized medicine umbrella."

This story is one of Anna, whose heartbreak swept her away to her second home/nation, France. Anna is running away from a man who broke her heart by cheating on her with another woman. In Paris, she finds an interim job in translating an erotic book from French to English. She hooks up with old friends and works on mending her broken heart. And, what's the best fix for that? A new man! And, that's precisely what Anna ends up with... Olivier. However, soon enough, Olivier lets her down just as her ex-boyfriend Timothy had. From that place of even deeper pain, Anna must rebirth herself as would Phoenix from the flames.

There were many ways that I could relate to Anna in this novel. At one point in the story, Anna states:

"... I watched the light from the flames play on his profile, and thought about how much I liked him. If I put aside my neurotic tendency to overthink every situation, things would be fine. I had to tell him. Right away."

Being an overly neurotic thinker, myself, I could relate with Anna and how she dealt with rebuilding the pieces of heart and mind.

This book is filled with French text. I was one of those who chose Spanish rather than French in high school. Therefore, I have absolutely NO familiarity with the language. Therefore, the French verbiage in the story lost me unless Marsot explained them in English immediately thereafter. In over 1/2 of the cases, she did. However, there is another 1/2 that I simply did not understand. I did, however, enjoy the descriptions of Paris, France and its wonderful food and delicacies.

The ending of the book was not what I had hoped for. There was a neat little twist in the ending, however for a good portion of the book I had already figured out the majority of the ending... so it wasn't a big surprise. However, I wanted something more after the book ended. I'm not sure what... because Marsot did tie up "loose ends" with the characters. It's just the way that I think I felt when the book was over. I was sad and I just wanted to see Anna in a different light. I didn't.

I wanted to share one more line in the book that I really liked. It's at the end of the story and Anna is visiting a "medicine man"/psychic to help her with her nightmares:

"Sometimes the world is too much to bear," he said. "This pain, it can take up residence in the hidden part of your mind, your dreams."

No kidding! My dreams hold me captive more than I'd like to admit!

On Sher's "Out of Ten Scale:"


I did like this book, however I didn't love it. There are many parts of it that are written so beautifully. In addition, there are some racy sections and some humorous ones. The book did elicit feelings from me and I was definitely attached to the story. For the genre:Fiction, I shall rate this read an 8 OUT OF 10.

"Foreign Tongue" is a writer's novel, the art of it quietly brilliant. It takes what seems like an ordinary plot about a breakup and turns it into a trans-Atlantic search for meaning ... through words.
Anna is bookish, smart, funny, sassy, yet a bumbler when it comes to men and love. The cure for her self absorption presents itself in the form of an erotic French novel by anonyme, which she is commissioned to translate. The mysterious novel, and the city of Paris (which remains unknowable and impenetrable to most foreigners), allow Anna -- who is split down the middle as a bilingual, dual-national woman -- to bring all the parts of herself together. Marsot, a French-Egyptian American knows Paris in ways no other American writer can know it. This is a gorgeous novel, for those who long to lose and find themselves on foreign soil.

"Foreign Tongue" is the story of a French-american woman who moves from Los Angeles to Paris to get over a disasterous love affair. Once there, she lands a job translating a mysterious novel while embarking on a relationship with an attractive frenchman. Unfortunately, this brief description does not do the book justice, as Marsot's novel moves beyond the usual girl-meets-boy story to be a smart, sexy, funny and touching meditation on identity, language, culture and desire. Her descriptions of everything from Paris fashion and food to its somewhat incestuous artistic/literary scene are spot on and her musings about the difficulties of translation both inform and enrich the story. Her main character is sympathetically, believably flawed and the supporting characters are particularly rich and colorful. A great debut novel (and perfect for a movie adaptation!)

This book is great. The very endearing main character, Anna, whose behavior fluctuates from seriousness to slapstick and back asks lots of questions about life and even finds some answers. I found `Foreign Tongues' fantastically pertinent, sassy and at the same time grave. It made me laugh out loud and also cry. I was so absorbed reading it, I even missed my metro stop! Paris is wonderfully portrayed and perfectly believeable. A novel full of life. I recommend it highly. Bravo.

I really enjoyed this book and didn't want it to end! It was absorbing and compelling, with rich detail and great characters. Being a word lover, I enjoyed the comparisons between French and English as well as those between Paris and Los Angeles cultures. I thought I might be a bit lost with the French, but it was no obstacle. Marsot makes it easy to understand what is going on. It was hard to put the book down. It gave me goosebumps and made me think, laugh and cry. I have bought the book for several friends. I really appreciate Marsot's craft as a writer, and sometimes while I was reading, I had to remind myself that she was the one actually writing the novel within the novel. Very well-written with a great sense of humor. It's a wonderful first novel, and I can't wait for the next!

I loved this book! I'm not much for writing reviews (I'd rather just start reading my next book), but I have to do it for this one.

The exquisite and deliberate care and contemplation that Anna devotes to her translations contrasts beautifully with her lack of true reflection about the choices that she makes in her own life.

I found that I responded to this book on so many levels -- I reveled in her quest for intellectual precision in finding the perfect word, I became enthralled by the titillating story she was translating and I felt like a mother hen watching over the life that she was making for herself.

Intellectual & wordly women, order this book!!!

(BTW, a few French courses long ago was enough for me to appreciate how the language was woven throughout.)

Having read my weight in "Non-French Women in France" books I wondered if Foreign Tongue would be filled with the genre's artless cliches. Instead, Vanina Marsot has written an intelligent, sympathetic novel about a half-French, half-American woman's season in beautiful Paris. She arrives to heal from one heartbreak, manages to entangle herself in another iffy relationship, but gets through her days there with wit, spunk, some measure of self-pity but also a great affection for her friends and Paris itself. God bless Marsot and her editors for weaving in yards and yards of French phrases, a delight for people learning not just the language but its nuances. One criticism is I didn't find the novel within the novel even interesting, let along compelling, and wound up skipping those sections. Still, the main of the novel is well-written and would love to see a new book by this writer, still set in Paris but touching on something more substantial than differences between French and American sexual mores.