The combination of a Paris visit (a week with my sister at the beginning of May) and my just-beginning Retirement has me ramping up my efforts with the French language. Listening to French radio and watching French TV series and films on Netflix (especially good when they're available with French, rather than English, subtitling -- as is the very good TV series, Témoins) helps my oral comprehension, but for increasing vocabulary and cementing grammar, I try to read a few French novels a year. I was lucky enough to find Fred Vargas' latest in a bookstore on Blvd. St. Germain (the Polish bookstore, apparently, but with a broader range than that suggests, and the Vargas in the window display drew me in). I'm holding off on that treat, but I just finished a light read that I picked up at Charles de Gaulle airport: Agnès Martin-Lugand's Entre mes Mains le Bonheur se Faufile.
I'm obviously not qualified to comment credibly on the writing, but the characters were as well drawn as I've found in the English examples of the genre (chick lit) -- which might be expected given the author's training as a psychologist. The plot can be stripped down to predictable enough lines: young woman, boring marriage in which she tries to be happy but gets little attention from her husband, a physician, meets exciting, sophisticated, but dangerous seducer when she boldly embarks on a new career as a couturière, beginning by enrolling in an intensive training program. Interesting embellishments: the powerful and fascinating woman who runs the school and takes our protagonist under her wing -- and who poses a different set of dangers; Paris! the setting is a pleasure, of course, not just the places I recognize but descriptions of places I now want to track down; and some of the details about the fashion design world, although really not enough to satisfy anyway who might come to the novel looking for this. Overall, though, the novel is an enjoyable example of its genre, and I'm planning to order Martin-Lugrand's first novel, the intriguingly titled Les gens heureux lisent et boivent du café.
I'm obviously not qualified to comment credibly on the writing, but the characters were as well drawn as I've found in the English examples of the genre (chick lit) -- which might be expected given the author's training as a psychologist. The plot can be stripped down to predictable enough lines: young woman, boring marriage in which she tries to be happy but gets little attention from her husband, a physician, meets exciting, sophisticated, but dangerous seducer when she boldly embarks on a new career as a couturière, beginning by enrolling in an intensive training program. Interesting embellishments: the powerful and fascinating woman who runs the school and takes our protagonist under her wing -- and who poses a different set of dangers; Paris! the setting is a pleasure, of course, not just the places I recognize but descriptions of places I now want to track down; and some of the details about the fashion design world, although really not enough to satisfy anyway who might come to the novel looking for this. Overall, though, the novel is an enjoyable example of its genre, and I'm planning to order Martin-Lugrand's first novel, the intriguingly titled Les gens heureux lisent et boivent du café.
My next book is an English one, and it's a title I've been waiting years for. I'll tell you about that soon, but meanwhile, I'm curious to hear from those of you who read in another language. Why and how and what differences do you notice, if any, about reading in one language as opposed to another?