A review by bluestjuice
How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance by Marilyn Yalom

4.0

This was really interesting, although maybe not exactly what I was expecting out of the experience. Like some other reviewers summarized, I was anticipating a more sociological perspective, while this work is instead an overview of influential French literature around the theme of love. It was still really interesting to me, more so perhaps because a great deal of the literature Yalom discussed was not works with which I was already familiar. Still, there was something evident in the small vignettes she sprinkled through the more scholarly information that suggested a truly unique, French characteristic of love, that was never fully expanded on or explored. It's also worth pointing out that this constitutes a largely Eurocentric overview of love literature. It's also worth acknowledging that the idea of French love supremacy is hardly unchallenged: indeed, most European countries get credited with being the home of lovers (with the exception of the English, poor souls). But the French, Spanish, and Italians, at very least, would have to duke it out for the title in popular conception.