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Amar Em Francês (2012)

by Ellen Sussman(Favorite Author)

3.1 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Noites Brancas

review 1: I would not have bought this if I had known it was four short stories. I prefer to avoid short stories.None of the stories are complete. At the end of the three American stories, my feelings were: 1. empty. 2. I’m left hanging. 3. I feel like what’s the point. There was a nice end for the tutors, but it was missing the middle – no character or relationship development.The subject matter in the three American stories: 1. A woman grieves over the death of a lover. 2. A woman who is miserable and unhappy with her life. 3. A guy who loves his wife, but daydreams and desires his beautiful tutor. A common thread in all four stories: someone in a relationship is cheating or thinking about cheating.I immensely disliked the jumping around in time. For example ... more2 pages of a character thinking about the past, then 2 pages of what’s happening now, then 1 paragraph about the past. This happens through all the stories.The author used French phrases and did not translate them – at least 40 times. It made me angry and I am still angry. I’m fine with foreign phrases if the author puts the translation immediately after in parentheses. But that was not done. Each time it happened, it pulled me out of the story. I’m thinking what am I missing? What are they saying? You’d think I would be ok since I had a semester of French in college, but that didn’t help.OTHER BOOKS:I enjoyed the author’s book “A Wedding in Provence” except for the French phrase problem. She did the same thing in that book - no translations.DATA:Narrative mode: 3rd person. Story length: 236 pages. Swearing language: strong including religious swear words but not often used. Sexual language: moderate. Number of sex scenes: about 8 short scenes. Some of them were referred to, no details shown. Setting: current day Paris, France. Copyright: 2011. Genre: womens fiction.
review 2: French Lessons tells us about one day in the life of three french teachers and their respective students for the day in the magical city of Paris.In the first story we meet Nico and his student Josie, an american woman spending a vacation in Paris to recover from the death of her secret lover. She arrived in Paris as a numb mess and Nico thinks he can fix her by falling in love with her while showing her the city of love.The second story is about the playboy and also french teacher Phillippe and Riley, a depressed american woman currently living in Paris with her never-present-husband and their two kids. They get involved romantically and they have to sort it out in order to not ruin their lives, if they already aren't.The main characters in third and last story are the beautiful teacher Chantal and Jeremy, the husband of a famous american movie star currently shooting some scenes in Paris. Jeremy believes he might be in love with Chantal and throughout their last day of lessons he is left in charge of finding out his true feelings for either his long-time-wife or his oh-so-young-and-beautiful-french-teacher.In the end o the day they all have a decision to make and they will have to live with whatever decision they make.I found it particularly hard to connect with this book mainly because the characters were so much older than me and I just couldn't relate to any of their lite stories.I do believe this is a wonderfully written book, although a bit negative, and I might even be able to enjoy it more when I'm older. I found Chantal a particularly interesting character but besides her I thought the remaining characters were slightly flat and even primitive in their approaches.In my honest opinion I believe this is a book for someone with a lot of life experience in order to be able to relate with the storyline. less

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