Another Late Book Review

 

Who says twenty years is too long for talking about a new-to-me book?

Actually, Almost French, Australian journalist Sarah Turnbull's 2004 memoir about the unexpected romance that led her to start a new life in France in the mid-1990s, felt right on time to me.

Turnbull's vivid experiences trying to relate to her new boyfriend's friends and associates were among the topics of our Sunday conversation a few weeks ago. A week later, I was loaned a copy which I read with a bit of nostalgia for a dreamy, now-inaccessible Paris, that was also still (work with me here) a future-dream-Paris-before-I-knew-Paris. Which is to say that I didn't make my first trip to Paris until 2008, four years after the memoir was published, and by then, the internet and cell phones were already changing the landscape, although it was well before sites like AirBnB began to drastically alter the way tourists and locals moved. 

I was thrilled to read that Turnbull and her boyfriend, Frédéric/Fred lived near rue Montorgeuil, which was a street I knew well from its proximity to a friend's apartment. Her description of the street, and the mention of one of my favorite spots, Au Rocher de Cancale, which dates to 1804, reminded me of my own experiences in the neighborhood, and made me curious how much of the rest of the street still matches her description or, as I suspect, has changed in the ways Turnbull feared they might. Something, not for google, but to think about the next time I'm there. 

Despite the sweeping transformations of the last two decades in terms of technology, many of Turnbull's cultural experiences still have relevance in 2024, and the writing and storytelling is sharp, immersive, and detail-rich. While there are plenty of online reviews of the book, I just wanted to alert folks who, like me, might have missed it the first time. It is well worth finding a copy.

In Almost French, Turnbull recommended Polly Platt's French or Foe, which mixes humor with advice and cultural understanding. Platt's book came out in 2003, and is now in its third edition, but again, I'm just now reading it. So far, incredibly insightful and built upon a wealth of hard-won expertise. As Turnbull points out - Platt's recommendation for surviving a dinner party with French people you don't yet know well? Pretend you're a chair so that you don't feel hurt when you are ignored. No doubt it's a tongue in cheek comment, but there are definitely times when Platt's advice would have made me laugh at my wallflower circumstances rather than feel frustrated.

Now I'm on a spree with other related books that I missed while my focus was elsewhere, like Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, again first published in 2003, but this one is about 21st C globalization in France as viewed from an early vantage point. Right on time.