Le Divorce

Plot was intriguing and fun to follow.

Characters were alternately bewildering and amusing:
"I know I am dumb about speaking French...."

Though adultery appears commonplace in this book,
it felt like a lack of character for Isabel to so easily betray
another woman with a husband so open to a mistress.

Not only did the ending feel contrived, with no explanation of how
the murderer knew they would be at EuroDisney,
but the author and her main character's complete disdain and lack of respect
for the never-ending French cruelty of foie gras was painful to read.

Would she have joined in with bull-fighting in Spain or seal hunts in Canada?

I read this book as "something light", and was surprised to find that, at least in the first half, had the depth of a literary novel. I expected that the story would continue to go along the carefully set out lines: a family conflict in which each character has a different opinion and interest, crises of conscience and goals.
Suddenly, as if the author is in a hurry to forge an ending, we tumble into sex scenes, illicit affairs, a hostage crisis, murder and all the other ingredients of a bestsellers. Did Johnson get a nudge from her editor to juice it up, or is she not able to sustain the literary level she started with? Yes, the book sold well and was of course made into a movie, because of all the sensatioanal action, but it lost its show more real meaning and its literary value. show less

This novel evokes the spirit of expatriates sojourning in Paris; it tells the story of Isabel Walker, a young film-school dropout who travels to Paris to aid her stepsister, who is going through a divorce. "You take for granted that your life will work out. When something calls that into question, then the entire world begins to seem like those films of demolition, silent fragments of roof and windows flying through the air with carefree velocity."

Beware the need to be armed with a French-English dictionary for translations since there were so many French words, phrases, and complete paragraphs in French that were not translated. It lends the novel certain flair but can be annoying at times.

Isabel's Californian upbringing, her show more ingrained sense of American freedom, and feminist slants comingle and clash with the customs, biases, and complex sexuality of modern Europe. She enters into a clandestine affair with a Frenchman and begins to develop her own opinions about what it means to be American or French, at home or foreign. Meanwhile the drama of Roxeanne's imminent divorce unfolds, entwining the two families in a dispute over a newly-valuable painting. As the plot rises, Isabel's family arrives in Paris to mediate, opposing forces clash more bluntly, and the situation becomes increasingly complicated.

The ending seemed to be abrupt for my taste, like it fell off a cliff and you're left hanging. The big plot question is: Will Paris defeat the sisters and send them home, or will they somehow learn to stand on their own feet and defend their ground?

"The affairs of ordinary life cannot be forced to fit in with all our desires. It was sometimes awkward to have my every step marked out for me in advance and all my moments counted."
~ 'Constant' by Adolphe

"But whoever it is who has thus determined the course of our life has, in so doing, excluded all the lives we might have led instead of our actual life."
~ 'The Past Recaptured' by Proust

...sins of self-indulgence, sins of indifference, sins of insensitivity.

Book Details:

Title Le Divorce
Author Diane Johnson
Reviewed By Purplycookie show less

Yes this is chick lit, but it's not fluff. A social commentary of a young woman, family relations, love relations, etc. in France. A good read, realistic. But if you don't know French, you may struggle a bit when french phrases and sentences find their way into the text.

Le Divorce is a fun book to read, written as a non-fiction but clearly a novel. Following Isabel Walker's antics is fun, and comparing her sister and her different outlooks on life can be amusing. I started the book, put it down, picked it up again, and then stayed up until early morning reading it. Excellent author, making the characters come to life.

This is a funny, light novel that is mostly about French culture vs. American culture. The basic plot: the narrator is a woman in her 20's. Her sister is living in Paris with her French husband, who has announced that he wants a divorce. The narrator flies (literally) to her side. While she is in Paris, she meets a modern-day Virginia Woolf character, and has an affair.

I enjoyed the commentary on French culture.

An unpleasant book, which I was attracted to because it supposedly details the main character's challenges in learning to speak French. I also read Le Marriage which for some reason I have no memory of. I think this will be the last book I read by her.