I found this third Diane Johnson novel about Americans in France just as worthy as Le Divorce and Le Mariage in terms of its humorous and serious look at the struggle for French and American people to comprehend and accept each others' cultural issues. Central in L'Affaire (2003) is Amy Hawkins, a newly wealthy dot.com executive from Palo Alto, who wishes to broaden her sophistication by living in Paris. The story begins, however, in the ski town of Valmari in the French Alps, where Amy becomes involved in the drama of an English-American couple who were injured in an avalanche. Amy’s ill-advised, but well-meaning choice to finance the elaborate medical care necessary to fly the elderly husband to England where he dies, is symbolic of typical good-hearted, but bumbling American judgment in all realms Throughout the course of the story, Amy acquires some skills through her French cooking classes, but she cannot buy culture. “No amount of effort will ever make Amy sound French." Complicating Amy's struggle is French-Tunisian snob Emile, a self-proclaimed anti-American. "He everywhere found examples of the detestability of Americans—brash, arrogant, loud-talking, and loud-dressing bullies with no understanding of other cultures, a complete lack of interest in things beyond themselves, and concerned only with American hegemony. He would not voluntarily make the acquaintance of one, and didn’t anticipate that he’d had to" (118-19). tLater, Amy asks Emile if, for all his assumed expertise on Americans, he has ever visited the United States. “Certainly, not,” he says (322). The eventual brief affair between these two characters indeed seems doomed from the outset. At her good-bye party, given for her French friends on the eve of her return to Palo Alto, Amy serves typical California fare such as enchiladas, nachos, quesadillas, prawns marinated in lime juice, and margaritas. Her friend Géraldine intervenes, however, to make sure there are some French-style hors d’oeuvres and two versions of the chili. “For those—almost every French person—who weren’t fond of spices, it would be chili without chili powder, more of a boeuf bourguignon with beans” (333). t Johnson’s novels all end with an ultimately pessimistic view of Anglo-French romances. Most of the English or American pairings with French peoples fail or do not seem destined to last. But the romp through the cultural differences seems to have been an enlightening, if often aggravating, one for all involved. Differences in cultural practices and preferences have scarcely been resolved, disagreements as to which culture is the most sophisticated—or the least irritating—is still a matter of opinion on both sides.
Call me superficial but I am becoming a fan of Diane Johnson. This does not equal her first novel, Le Divorce, and Amy does not become a presence immediately, the way Isobel does - but then Amy is a very different sort of American girl. You will either like her or you won't - she sort of grew on me in the course of the book. She has a tabula rasa quality and a lust for self-improvement which is more interesting as she begins to interact with the people she meets in France and begins to change.It is a kind of coming of age book, even though she's already 30 years old. However, the characters I love in this book are Posy, the perpetually pissed off yet passionate English girl who REALLY does not fit into the French society, and Kip, the snowboarding teenager from California who has to learn to take care of an 18-month-old baby and deal with the loss of his family all in one day. We are treated along the way to even more of Johnson's mordant portraits of the rich French ladies who groom rich American ladies to find husbands and/or lovers by way of cooking and language classes. A world in itself, which I am content to never experience personally. GAH! Three stars, because it's a slow starter, but as it progressed, I was impelled to give it four - nah, leave it at three - but it is fun and ends up being a bit more than fun, with some deeper interactions between the characters.
What do You think about L'Affaire (2004)?
What an interesting book! A newly wealthy Californian gets involved with a party of French, German and English visitors to a ski resort in the French Alps. An avalanche buries two, and Amy becomes increasing involved with the survivors, who are not entirely pleased with her do-good attempts to rectify some situations with the money she doesn't quite know what to do with. Returning to Paris for French lessons, culture, and developing a compelling need to buy a run-down chateau, Amy becomes even more involved when one of the survivors sues her.The ending was a little weak, but the entire story is much more introspective than it would seem at first glance. The author has taken the sensibilities of a Jane Austen novel and applied it to a contemporary setting, with brief liaisons flaring up here and there.
—Susan Bogart
A very entertaining and astute novel about cultural differences, mainly French and American. Amy Hawkins, a newly minted wealthy dot.com executive, travels to France to improve herself and obtain some European cultural polish. At the ski resort where she is staying, a couple is caught in an avalanche. The English husband dies but his American wife lives, leading to an extended struggle between the French and English inheritance laws and the families involved. Since I enjoy all things French, this was a fun read for me.
—Bernadette
I didn't get the point of this book. I read Le Divorce and liked it (granted, a while ago...maybe I didn't like it as much as I remember?) so I figured I'd like this book by Diane Johnson. But with a title as steamy as L'Affaire, you'd think it would be more interesting, not just a drawn-out, boring look at American and European cultures/people. It wasn't even so much about English and French inheritance laws like the jacket says. I thought it would at least be a funny look at these cultural differences but I didn't find it very humorous. And I found it extremely annoying that the POV changed from one character to another in a matter of sentences. Unfortunately, I can't stop reading a book once I've started.
—Cris
