How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance [Paperback]

Marilyn Yalom (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 23, 2012

“Absolutely marvelous…lively and learned….Marilyn Yalom’s book is a distinguished contribution to our experience of a great literature, as well as an endearing memoir.”
—Diane Johnson, author of Lulu in Marrakech and Le Divorce

“[An] enchanting tour of French literature—from Abelard and Heloise in the 12th century to Marguerite Duras in the 20th and Philippe Sollers in the 21st.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

How the French Invented Love is an entertaining and masterful history of love à la française by acclaimed scholar Marilyn Yalom. Spanning the Middle Ages to the present, Yalom explores a love-obsessed culture through its great works of literature—from Moliere’s comic love to the tragic love of Racine, from the existential love of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre to the romanticism of George Sand and Alfred de Musset. A thoroughly engaging homage to French culture and literature interlaced with the author’s delicious personal anecdotes, How the French Invented Love is ideal for fans of Alain de Botton, Adam Gopnik, and Simon Schama.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Cultural historian Yalom traces the French view of love through the literature and history of the country via the lives of significant figures, both real and imagined, especially writers and their characters. Beginning with courtly love and the quintessential lovers, Abelard and Héloïse, she demonstrates how the French concept of love developed and changed over the years while never losing the unique elements that make romance in France different from anywhere else in the world. Racine’s character, Phaedre, the love letters of Julie de Lespinasse, the person and writings of George Sand, and, of course, Cyrano de Bergerac embody the nuances of romantic gallantry, passion during the revolution, love between men, existentialism and amorousness, and twentieth-century ardor. Don’t doubt that this is a serious, scholarly work, even as Yalom lightens the tone by inserting asides that illuminate her own wry view of the world. This superbly realized and wonderfully engaging work of analytical cultural history creates a class by itself. --Danise Hoover

Review

“By the end of this book, it is hard not to feel both breathless and dowdy. Am I living sufficiently by my passions? Shouldn’t my husband be making more declarations? Perhaps the French are on to something.” (Pamela Druckerman, Wall Street Journal )

“[An] amiable tour through changing French attitudes toward love during the past millennium....Engaging.” (New Yorker )

“Marilyn Yalom’s new study, How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance, reaches beyond the stereotypes by focusing on literature, making an erudite, elegant, and charming case for France’s love ‘invention.’” (Los Angeles Review of Books )

“This superbly realized and wonderfully engaging work of analytical cultural history creates a class by itself.” (Booklist )

“How the French Invented Love is absolutely marvelous, so lively and learned....Marilyn Yalom’s book is a distinguished contribution to our experience of a great literature, as well as an endearing memoir.” (Diane Johnson, author of Lulu in Marrakech and Le Divorce )

“Seductive and fascinating. Marilyn Yalom is the perfect companion for this delightfully candid tour de l’amour.” (Diane Ackerman, author of One Hundred Names for Love )

“The author employs an enjoyably downright style, blending in her own experiences in France over the course of 60 years as well as the personal stories of French friends. . . . Her first-person confidences give this an engagingly informal tone.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“Marilyn Yalom is a charming guide on an exploration of desire, romance, sex and passion à la française. Like a detective on a steamy case, Yalom digs through literature and life, uncovering the mysteries of l’amour. How the French Invented Love will surely seduce you.” (Ellen Sussman, author of French Lessons )

“Marilyn Yalom reclaims her enchantment with love stories from France. She explores the mysteries and complexities of love as they have been bequeathed by the French from centuries of their literature....She goes beyond the recognizable clichés to offer a comprehensive study, a rich psychological and cultural survey.” (Pierre Saint-Amand, Brown University; author of The Pursuit of Laziness: An Idle Interpretation of the Enlightenment )

“Marilyn Yalom combines a witty and conversational style with impressive erudition….[She] is no misty-eyed idealist when it comes to love, or to the French, but her personal involvement in the story is part of the charm of this highly readable book.” (Susan Rubin Suleiman, Harvard University; author of Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature )

“Enchanting….At the heart of this delicious book is Yalom the reader, whose fascination with the French way of love and pleasure in sharing her enthusiasms is highly contagious. Readers will want to run to the library and stay there for a year, reading everything she deconstructs.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Original edition (October 23, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062048317
• ISBN-13: 978-0062048318
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Yalom's Best Book to Date October 26, 2012

By Constance Borde

Format:Paperback

In full disclosure, I am an avid fan of Marilyn Yalom's books: rich in detail, academically factual, and so readable that you can't put them down. But How The French Invented Love is a real tour de force. Yalom puts herself and her long experience as an expert in French literature into this fascinating history of how notions of love have developed over the centuries from Middle Age France to our present day and how they have influenced the Western world. Yalom's style is engrossing and informative. Putting herself and her reflections into the work is a delicate writing trick. It never turns against the subject, never banalizes it. She has mastered the art in this one. There are so many wonderful passages where she passes from the historical past to her own past, and then to the present. Sheer genius! Feminist, erudite, informative, Yalom decodes culture in a way that makes us understand the world in which we live.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing for me January 14, 2013

By Beth DeRoos HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Have enjoyed and recommend Marilyn Yalom's books and LOVE all of them, aside from this one. I guess I view the word 'love' differently than those in this book. Love is about honouring a promise you make to your partner/spouse. It's about better for worse, sickness and health, richer poorer and all the valleys as well as the mountain tops. I speak as a widow who lost her husband after 38 years of marriage.

For me the men/women in this book just seemed so self centered and narcissistic to the point I had to put the book down after reading a chapter because love was the last word that entered my mind. Sure there is a bounty of lust,sex, sensuality and earthly actions. But these do not equate to deep abiding love for me.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mailyn Yaloms Discovers How the French Invented Love November 10, 2012

By Julius Kaplan

Format:Paperback

Allow me to be frank. I have had the experience of reading virtually all of Marilyn Yalom's books. The titles are always intriguing, the writing is exquisite, the scholarship is always impressive, and I have always learned from them; however, they have never fully reflected the warm personality and enormous sensitivity of the author as does her latest book: "How the French Invented Love".

In this beautifully written work, Marilyn Yalom has imbued this book with her own personal experience. She knows and admires the French people,French culture and language,French sensitivities, and she has many French friends and experiences in France. But most importantly, she has a genuine love of France. These personal elements permeate the book and bring it to life.

The book, can be viewed, on its most basic level, as a study of the evolution of the role of love - and sex - in the history of French literature. Marilyn Yalom explores it from the twelfth century view of love, as reflected by the romance of Abelard and Heloise, through the ages, as it evolves and changes.

This delightful book, however, goes further. It is infused with the author's fascination with a subject of overriding importance to the French, to their weltanschauung, and clearly to the author personally. After reading the book you feel that you have experienced an elaborate and elegant dinner with each course reflecting a different period of the culinary history of French attitudes, passions and tastes of love.

It is no surprise, as the author reveals, that when older French and Americans were asked whether "true love can exist without a radiant sex life," the overwhelming majority of Americans concluded that it could, while only thirty some percent of the French said that it was possible. It is not surprising, as the author reveals, that throughout French literary history, and French life, marriage and passion, are not necessarily viewed as being inseparable. Indeed, a French man or woman without erotic desire is viewed as defective.

In short this is a delicious book written by a very gifted writer who cannot disguise her love of France, French literature, and the French people - and, most importantly, of love itself.