Sanaë Lemoine
Author of The Margot Affair
1 Work 163 Members 6 Reviews
About the Author
Includes the names: Sanae Lemoine, Sanaë Lemoine
Image credit: pulled from author website, http://www.sanaelemoine.com
Works by Sanaë Lemoine
Tagged
2020 (2)
2020CC (1)
2021 (2)
abandoned (2)
ARC (2)
arcs (2)
coming of age (5)
costumer (1)
dancers (1)
Dec 20 (1)
epubs (1)
F (2)
family secrets (2)
fiction (17)
France (6)
Imported May 14 (1)
journalists (2)
Juliette (1)
Kindle (2)
Lapierre Bertrand (1)
library-books (1)
Love in the Big City (Sang Young Park (1)
Mathilde (1)
mothers and daughters (4)
netgalley (1)
Nimes (1)
owned-books (1)
Paris (7)
Paris (France) (2)
physically-owned (1)
Politicians--Family relationships (1)
read 2020 (1)
Sanaë Lemoine (1)
second family (1)
ShakespeareAndCompany (1)
Sun Valley (1)
tbr_subscription (1)
teenage girls (2)
theater designer (1)
to-read (21)
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- France
- Birthplace
- Paris, France
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
- Education
- Columbia University (MFA)
- Occupations
- Cookbook Editor at Phaidon Press and Martha Stewart Books
Members
Reviews
2
Flagged
Narshkite | 5 other reviews | Oct 21, 2020 | The Margot of the title is the teenaged love child of a French actress and a married politician who tires of being her parents' secret and outs the relationship in the press. The novel is full of complicated relationships, all of which become even more difficult because of Margot's impetuous decision.
Set in Paris, the book is a love-letter to the City of Lights with vivid descriptions of its neighborhoods and parks, its food and drink, and its traditions and culture. Lemoine writes beautifully and her words draw you into Margot's world. Part coming-of-age story, part family drama, The Margot Affair can be frustrating at times - the pacing is slow and it's not a story where a lot happens but things pick up considerably in part two. I wasn't sure how Lemoine would resolve Margot's predicament but the ending was satisfying and felt true to the characters.
Thank you to NetGalley, Hogarth (Penguin Random House) and the author for an advanced copy of the novel in exchange for my unbiased review.… (more)
Set in Paris, the book is a love-letter to the City of Lights with vivid descriptions of its neighborhoods and parks, its food and drink, and its traditions and culture. Lemoine writes beautifully and her words draw you into Margot's world. Part coming-of-age story, part family drama, The Margot Affair can be frustrating at times - the pacing is slow and it's not a story where a lot happens but things pick up considerably in part two. I wasn't sure how Lemoine would resolve Margot's predicament but the ending was satisfying and felt true to the characters.
Thank you to NetGalley, Hogarth (Penguin Random House) and the author for an advanced copy of the novel in exchange for my unbiased review.… (more)
Flagged
ReadingIsMyCardio | 5 other reviews | Aug 26, 2020 | Dear Margot Affair, it’s not you...it’s me. I’ve been complaining about angsty young narrator novels where nothing really happens for a while, but I think I have finally hit my limit. There’s nothing particularly wrong with The Margot Affair; in fact, Sanae Lemoine has a knack for capturing small details--eyelashes, fabric, shadows--that evoke a deep sense of place and atmosphere. In this case, it’s Paris, where Margot has always known that her father was married to another woman, but she loves him and cherishes the time he spends with her and her mother, Anouk. Now in her last year of high school, she wants more from him, and tries to figure out how to make that happen. If that sounds like an intriguing plot, it is--but there’s just not enough of it. A large percentage of the novel involves characters remembering stories or telling anecdotes about other people--such as getting caught imitating another girl’s handwriting, or a mother abandoning her children on a train--as a means of illuminating some unknown aspect of their character. Also long, quotation mark-less conversation about these memories, or other seemingly mundane occurrences abound. It’s all quite well done, but just one too many plot-light character-heavy books for me. If you loved Normal People, Exciting Times, Pizza Girl, etc. then add this one to the pile.… (more)
Flagged
Hccpsk | 5 other reviews | Jul 23, 2020 | When you are a teenager you feel you can bend the world the way you want. Margot is 17, the daughter of the French Culture Minister and his mistress. Margot has never envisioned her father’s wife as a real person. But when Margot and her mother spy on her father’s wife, she realizes how real the wife is. Margot decides tell a journalist about their family hoping to jolt her father into action. But does it really help or ruin two people she loves.
Flagged
brangwinn | 5 other reviews | Jun 28, 2020 | You May Also Like
Statistics
- Works
- 1
- Members
- 163
- Popularity
- #129,735
- Rating
- ½ 3.4
- Reviews
- 6
- ISBNs
- 10
- Languages
- 1
Margot was like what a 16 year old thinks she appears to be in her best moments. She is intellectual, worldly (despite never having left France as far as I can tell) able to trade witticisms based in philosophy, drama, literature, art and science with journalists, actors, and academics. She is possessed of that enviable sangfroid unique to Parisians. Though Margot is just 16 she is completely unaffected when a boy she has just fucked in back room at a party pretends he does not know who she is and only slightly rattled when a completely crazy adult threatens the foundations of her existence. I don't know that girl. I know the girl who wants to be that girl, but I don't actually know that girl. That sangfroid is inherited from her mother who is balancing life as a stage actress and as a single parent by ignoring her child about 90% of the time and then dramatically making it clear that this apparent abdication of duty was all a grand plan to create a brilliant and independent woman. You're welcome. I don't know this woman. The aforementioned crazy lady and her husband, I don't know them either -- no yes I do, they were in Diary of a Mad Housewife.
Lemoine writes evocative food and great Paris and pretty decent passionless sex but she doesn't write realistic people. I love many books with characters who are nothing like me, Nathan Zuckerman (various Philip Roth), Ifemelu (Americanah), Lizzy Bennet, Gogol (The Namesake), Jay Gatsby, Pip, Antonia (My Antonia), Anne Shirley (of Green Gables), I could go on and on -- they are nothing like me, but there is some shared spark of humanity that connects me to these people with very different stories from my own. There was no spark here. Even the mean characters in books come to be like frends for a bit, Sometimes they are friends you don't like, but we all have friends we don't like. But here, sadly, I felt pas d'amitié. There is just nothing recognizable to latch onto in any of these people.… (more)