| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Haste makes waste!,
By Serendipity (Somewhere in the West) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Le Mariage (Hardcover)
The packaging of the book is misleading, first of all. The raving reviews on the back are not even for Le Mariage, but for Le Divorce! Also, it is not a sequel to Le Divorce. I'm even beginning to wonder if this book is by the same Diane Johnson who wrote Le Divorce. Some clues point to yes-many elements of the book are reminiscent of Le Divorce: there are wealthy Americans in Paris (starring a housewife once again), lack of communication between husband and wife, "film folk," faïence, mentions of les petits soins, crime, sex, shock-value swear words, and unrealistic dialogue (how many twenty-somethings do you know who actually say the word "shall"?). Although the characters and story line are new, the themes are repetitive. The book is not horrible, but when you're expecting something as superbly crafted as Le Divorce, you can only be greatly disappointed. It reads as if it were cranked out on a tight deadline and then re-arranged with an over-worked editor. There are several editorial errors and misinformation about France or the French language. The French never say "ooh la la," but rather "oh la la" (which they spell "ho la la" in French). And they DO have their own version of Kraft singles, a similar kind of processed, packed-by-the-slice cheese intended for use in croque monsieurs (which bear a striking resemblance to grilled cheese sandwiches in more ways than one). Johnson also mistakenly explains that the French way of pronouncing the word "pointe" (as in Grosse Pointe) is "pwahn." Wrong! Anyone who speaks French knows that the "T" is not silent as it is followed by that ever-powerful "E." I hope this error was that of an ignorant editor and not of Diane Johnson herself. Oregon does not have ice storms every year, either, or even every other year. As for the story as a whole, in the beginning it is difficult to keep track of the characters, who are introduced as a large block of inventory all at once (and take their leave in a similar fashion at the end). It is also easy to drift away or put the book down for more than a few days-nothing like the gripping Divorce where you are dying to know what happens next. Laced throughout are garden-path sentences that require a second glance, which slows the reading of the book considerably. Le Mariage will not suck you in as did Le Divorce. This time it is the reader, not the writer, who has to do the work of making the book enjoyable. Any success this book has enjoyed is due only to readers' yearning for another Divorce and not to the actual quality of Le Mariage. Don't fall into this publisher's trap!
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Diane Johnson weaves another high-class comic yarn...,
This review is from: Le Mariage (Hardcover)
In her follow-up to Le Divorce Diane Johnson gives us another sharply honed comedy of manners set in the drawing rooms and country estates of modern-day Paris that would make Jane Austen and Henry James proud. She's an expert at revealing the cultural barriers that divide France and America though unlike its more solid and satisfying predecessor, Le Mariage suffers somewhat from the weight of an overly contrived plot. The story focuses on a young cross-cultural couple, a Parisian antiquities dealer and her half-American, half-Belgian fiancé, who gets whisked into seemingly disparate scandals involving hunting laws, a stolen manuscript and some millennial conspiracists from Oregon in the hectic weeks leading up to their lavish wedding. A six-degrees-of-separation plot device connects Anne-Sophie d'Argel and Tim Nolinger with a colorful, Altmanesque swath of supporting characters, including a reclusive French-polish film director living in a quaint chateau outside Paris and his Oregonian wife who's accused of defacing a national historical monument in the name of home decoration. Throw in a moody, semi-handicapped American tourist from Oregon accused of murder, a French historical novelist prone to highbrow sexually explicit prose and a randy French landowner aching to explore marital infidelity and you get one of the motliest crew of fictional characters at least since Le Divorce. Too bad their contrived connections often deny credibility. The concise, measured prose on display in Le Mariage is what ultimately saves the day: Johnson writes with a savage wit that recalls the dark Hollywood novels of Bruce Wagner. But instead of alienating us with a slew of self-absorbed characters, Johnson succeeds in making us like these neurotic, soul-searching Parisians and Oregonian transplants despite their apparent flaws. The novel picks up magnificently in its closing chapters, as Johnson's screwball comedy ascends to the level of expert highbrow farce, including an ode to Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game that so cleverly blurs the lines between French and American cultural differences that you forgive Le Mariage its overcrafted clunkiness. Johnson's latest isn't as deliciously satisfying and rewarding as its National Book Award-nominated predecessor, though reading it is almost as pleasurable.
24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witty and sophisticated,
By
This review is from: Le Mariage (Hardcover)
Following "Le Divorce," a National Book Awardfinalist, Diane Johnson's latest novel, "Le Mariage," isanother comedy of manners set in the expatriate American community inParis. Johnson, who divides her time between Paris and San Francisco, casts an insightful eye over the cultural differences, wholesale assumptions and misperceptions of national character embraced by the French and the Americans who live among them.The story centers around the upcoming nuptials of American freelance journalist Tim Nolinger and his stylish French fiancée, Anne-Sophie. A horse-oriented antiques dealer, Anne-Sophie's bourgeois ambitions puzzle her famous novelist mother, Estelle, who cultivates a bohemian public persona while harboring highly practical concerns over Tim's ability to provide for her daughter... The novel's framework, with its increasingly zany and convoluted but believable plot lines, offers a solid scaffold for the dynamics of relationship that feed Johnson's witty observations on marriage, infidelity, morality, bureaucracy and cultural chauvinism. Her humor is dry and tart, but, for the most part, sunny. And her characters are delightful. A sophisticated treat.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
