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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY, 1 Sep 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
That was the question that faced Lucy Lemoine (nee Wadham unless that is just a nom de guerre) when she ended her 20-year marriage to a Frenchman. She had to decide whether it was nobler in the mind to suffer the talk and habits of outrageous Frenchmen or to pull up stumps and cross the sea to England, and maybe find that better. She had actually once gone along to apply for French citizenship, and had been so appalled by the rudeness of the civil servant she encountered that she changed her mind on the spot. However when it came to the later decision she elected to stay in France after all, although significantly not in Paris.
Myself, I have been to France ten or eleven times, including my honeymoon in Corsica, but reading this book makes me think I probably know the place better from television and maybe a few films than from my stays there. Nothing Lucy Wadham says about France or the French surprises me, and although my knowledge of it all seems somehow second-hand I think I can understand to a fair extent what she is talking about. She starts her narration where she ought to start it as a young woman, with the relations between the sexes, partly but not mainly her own experiences. I am not going to précis her findings: I shall say only that she has a very interesting slant not only on the work/life balance of the French but on the balance between their commitment to marriage, their adherence or otherwise to Catholic moral teaching, and their attitude to sexual relations generally. A lot of the interest of this part of the book may be unintentional, by giving us insights into her own mental and emotional processes. She is obviously very sharp and analytical, for instance, but if the word `love' occurs at all in this context I think I must have missed it.
One very interesting, and for me quite persuasive, insight is her opinion that the French are hidebound in their inherited traditions from 1789 and also in a self-deceiving mythology about themselves. This point the author illustrates from so many different angles that I can't help being drawn into her mindset. She sees herself as freethinking and independent-minded, and I would call that realistic on the evidence here and not a pose or auto-suggestion. Being of this way of thinking clearly creates communication barriers with the French, and Lucy Wadham does not quite convict the French national mindset of outright escapism, but she seems to me to come very near to it.
The book covers a wide spectrum of cultural and political issues, and with one exception I found myself keenly interested in Lucy Wadham's take on them. The exception occurs near the end, and that may have something to do with the matter, say a deadline to meet that did not help her concentration and focus. I really thought that the chatter about M Sarkozy as something called a `sexual dwarf' was a right load of rubbish, but perhaps I ought to reread the passage in due course. One way or another it is not significant enough to influence the rating I am prepared to give this thoroughly intelligent, fair-minded, readable and enjoyable volume. What really impresses me is that not only does the book address so many difficult and contentious topics with gusto and insight, it even provides, on page 64, nothing less than `the key to the French identity'. Short of identifying The Meaning of Life, I think this is as lofty and ambitious a generalisation as I have encountered in many years.
To me a theme of this kind, when attacked with so much mental grip and expressed with such lucidity, is far more interesting and involving than many a novel. I gather the author is a novelist, although this is the first time I have encountered her work. On this showing it will not be the last time.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tres bien, 19 Aug 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This book, which tells BBC journalist Lucy Wadham's first person account story of how she moved to France at the age of eighteen, fell for a Frenchman, subsequently married him and had his children. Her narrative style flows well and is easy to read and as a result, the book really draws you into her story. I particularly liked the way in which Wadham writes how she immersed herself into the French way of life without losing her wry English sense of humour and scepticism.
The chapters which cover subjects such as the French way of committing adultery `the secret garden', being a woman, childbirth, comedy and education are all well-crafted and blend Wadham's own experiences with published sources. I must confess that I wasn't aware of many of the issues raised and laughed when I read that French women are issued with a special device to tone their pelvic floor muscles after birth - can you imagine the NHS issuing such a widget? The chapter on education was also excellent and in many ways shows up the inadequacy of the English state system.
From a personal point of view, I didn't enjoy the latter chapters a great deal because although they were well-researched and punchy, subjects such as terrorism and foreign policy don't really float my boat. Saying that, Wadham's description of President Sarkozy was very amusing and I won't repeat it here! All in all, a good read and a book which manages to pack in a great deal of information and present it in an accessible way and as a result, I'll be seeking out Wadham's other titles.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mix of personal history and French history, 1 Aug 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Like many others I'm sure, I have a secret fantasy about moving to France based on my many holidays to that country over the years. Having read this book though, I'm not so sure that this is a very good idea! Starting with her courtship and marriage to a Frenchman in the 1980s, through to the present, divorced, but still living in France, Lucy Wadham explains some of the differences between our "Anglo-Saxon Culture" and the French way of looking at the world. The areas are wide-ranging, from sexual manners, the importance of appearance, attitudes to breast-feeding, the French school system, French healthcare, social system, politics, foreign policy, and more.
It's a more serious book than I was perhaps expecting, certainly with some humour, but also with a lot detailed discussion of history, politics and France's relationship with her ethnic minorities, and her response to terrorism. Certainly, it will give you some insight into the correct tone to adopt towards your boulanger, but it also deals with other more weighty issues than this.
If I have a criticism it is perhaps that this book doesn't quite catch the diversity of France, based very much on what Wadham experienced in her own circle. For example, she does touch on French rural life, but a more in-depth analysis of the differences between the city-dwellers and the proudly titled French "peasants" is beyond the scope of this book, perhaps understandably, but it is a shame nonetheless.
Definitely worth reading if you love France but find the French rather enigmatic as some light will be shed on the mysterious ways of our Gallic neighbour!
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by David Nicholls
