Customer Reviews

Le Mariage

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

While "Le Mariage" is no masterpiece, it is nonetheless an interesting novel, and not as bad a piece of work as some of these reviews would suggest.

Inevitably, it has to be compared with "Le Divorce", a more perfect achievement. In fact it is conceived, I believe, as a conterpoint or antithesis to that earlier work, and is intended to be read as such on some level.

In both novels we have various male members (ahem) of the de Persand family carrying on sexual relationships with American women. Central to "Le Divorce" is the outside affair that leads to the dissolution of the American heroine's marriage, and eventually to the murder of the "sinning" de Persand. BAD adultery... In "Le Mariage" another de Persand saves another American heroine from a loveless marriage with a cold, manipulative heel. GOOD adultery...

In fact, Ms. Johnson's thesis in "Le Mariage" is that true love, whether blessed by clergy or not, is more important and sacred than social convention -- not a new thought by any means, but intelligently and deftly worked out in this book. The allusions to the medieval literature of courtly love, which glorifies extramarital passion, are even made overt by the author in one of her chapters. Here, the heroine is a kind of saint on the altar of chevaleresque values (Clare Holly = Illuminated Holiness) and her transcendance and transfiguration take place in the bedroom with her lover. Their "aura" is stronger and truer than that of the other Franco-American couple who go through with the "legitimate", but nonetheless shaky and uncertain church marriage that is the book's erstwhile subject. Personally, I believe that the real "marriage" described in the title is the physical/spiritual union of Antoine and Clare, not the erstwhile main event. I wonder if the author would agree with me.

The book is overplotted, and darker in tone than "Le Divorce". There are fewer people to like than in the earlier book, and the author seems exasperated with the selfish and manipulative aspects of upperclass French society -- understandably enough, given the way things actually are in that corner of the world, but the characters and situations sometimes shade into caricature. Nonetheless "Le Mariage" is both a good read and an interesting contemporary parable/morality play.

I have forced myself to read over half of this novel and am going to have to give up. Diane Johnson's writing style tries too hard to be clever and ends up sounding silly and pretentious. Her characters are two-dimensional and dull and what little plot developed early on surrounding a mysterious murder just about disappeared halfway through the book. I have not read "Le Divorce," but based on other reviews here, I will give it a try. It can only be better than this mediocre novel.

I have read all of Diane Johnson's novels in print, and I found "Le Mariage" to be typically brilliant. The only novel I've read of hers that I didn't care for was "Burning," and that was a pretty early one. My favorites are "The Shadow Knows," "Persian Nights," and "Health and Happiness." A lot of the complaints about "Le Mariage" fault its plot; I would not recommend reading Johnson for plot; read her for her amazing wit, syntax, word choice, and keen powers of observation (she's a genius, in my view). The only novelists I've read recently who are as good as her are Carol Shields ("Larry's Party") and Jonathan Franzen ("The Corrections").

"Le Mariage" is the tale of a wedding, a marriage, and an international crime. Clara, a beauty and erstwhile actress, is not-very-happily married to Serge, a famous filmaker. Anne-Sophie, a flea market dealer, is about to be married to Tim, an American journalist. The two couples are brought together by Delia and Gabriel, American antiquers and millenial cultists who happen on the scene of a murder. A large cast of minor characters - Anne-Sophie's mother, the wedding coordinator, a mayor, Serge's neighbor - tumble in and out of the story, which, at its best, is an energetic interweaving of several unusual plotlines.

Unfortunately, the story is not always at its best. The narrative begins in an abrupt manner, switching points of view rapidly and not focusing on characters long enough to allow the reader to become accustomed to them in the crucial first third of the book. The latter pages are much easier to read; however, the narration is often grating, with its heavy-handed suggestions about the American expatriate community in France and the differences between American and French culture. The other apparent theme of the book - the discrepancy in perception and priorities between men and women - is explored with an equal lack of subtlety, and while the characters are animated and entertaining they are also rigidly stereotyped. Finally, the book's ending is abrupt and overdramatized, closing the action without resolving any of the complications introduced in the exposition.

There is much that is good in "Le Mariage": lively writing, well-drawn characters, intricate and offbeat plot. It inhabits a world unfamiliar to most potential readers, and this adds to its charm. But the story seems to escape its author, who seems capable of only the coarsest commentary on the delicate characters and situations she has created. The story is enjoyable for much of its length, and not an unworthwhile read, but the ending is flat and disappointing, leaving readers with the promise of a great story that was never fulfilled.

The professional book reviews at the top of the page all love Le Mariage, while the reviews are more mixed. Perhaps the professionals get the book at a deeper level than the rest of us do. Or perhaps they are just mistaking caricatures and muddled plot for biting satire and a revealing look at human nature.

First off, it is not really possible to review this book without serious spoilers since the most obvious part to review is the ending. Several other reviewers have criticized it, so I will just say that I agree with the criticisms of other reviewers about abruptness and dropped characters and not get into the details.

Le Mariage is most likely a parable. It tells the intertwined stories of two couples. Anne-Sophie and Tim are engaged to be married. Anne-Sophie is a French antiques dealer and a horse fancier. Tim is half-Belgian and half-American. He is a freelance journalist who writes primarily for a left-wing magazine and a right-wing magazine about European issues.

Near the beginning of the book, Tim meets and falls in lust with Clara Holly, a beautiful American-born actress who made one movie and now lives in the French countryside with her director-husband Serge. Serge is Polish but grew up in America.

Of course, Tim's lust for Clara does not bode well for his impending marriage to Anne-Sophie. Anne-Sophie feels him drawing away from her and turns to the romance books her mother wrote for advice--something that leads to the only truly funny parts of the books. Those books tell her things like you need to speak in the heat of passion to your partner. So she reads D.H. Lawrence and tries out a few phrases. She is puzzled that Tim does not react well to this, so she looks to her mother's book for other advice.

The book begins in an interesting style. It relates conversations and when characters make connections to events, it flashes back to the events. Unfortunately, Johnson drops this style in favor of exploring the nature of love, miscommunications between men and women and differences between French people and Americans.

This she does rather badly. Tim would have been an interesting character for this since he has a French-speaking mother and has spent most of his life in Europe but was born in America, has an American name and an American father. However, Johnson utterly fails to use this. In fact, Tim comes across as so American that every 30 pages or so, Johnson has to remind us that he is half-Belgian and explain that it is strange that he is taking such an American point of view.

There are also problems with Johnson's descriptions of the American and French side characters whom Johnson deliberately draws as caricatures for satire's sake, but come across as uninteresting rather than funny.

I would recommend re-reading Le Divorce and skipping this book.

if only i'd read the poor reviews, before reading. i kept reading...hoping it would get better--it never did.
no plot, and certainly no mystery, whatsoever.
the more you read, the dumber the story gets.
a complete waste of reading time.

Diane Johnson's novel Le Mariage presents the reader with a fun cast of characters, focusing on Americans in Paris and their French connections. The French Anne-Sophie and the American Clara Holly, the female halves of the two couples who are at the center of the book, are the most interesting characters. Anne-Sophie's bewilderment about, and fascination with, American customs and Americans is well done, especially in the trip to Oregon near the end of the novel. Adding a Parisian-in-America aspect puts a new twist on the themes Johnson explored in her previous novel Le Divorce.

Clara Holly, an actress from Oregon now living outside Paris, has more depth than Anne-Sophie and presents another side of the American-French story. The reader watches her struggle with her feelings about living in France, her relationship with her mother, and her responsibilities as a wife, both to her husband and to herself.

The emotional intricacies of the characters and the culture clashes that result when the Americans and the French interact are the best part of the novel. Although the French phrases Johnson scatters around seem more jarring than authentic, she does a very good job of showing how members of the two different cultures react to the same events. These reactions are funny and sometimes illuminating.

The plot of the novel, however, is convoluted and, especially when dealing with the Oregon millennialists, a little bit out there. By the end of the novel, the main plot lines have come together, but it doesn't really matter. At that point, the characters have already become more interesting than the plot. There are some loose ends that never get tied, though, and some issues are never resolved. Still, the novel is fun, and definitely worth reading for anyone with an interest in seeing French culture through American eyes and vice versa.