Scan barcode
A review by liralen
Almost French: Love and a New Life In Paris by Sarah Turnbull
3.0
Hmm. Okay. I'd been looking forward to this one for a while—I am perfectly happy to romanticise the idea of picking up and moving halfway across the world on a whim; ideally, I'd like to do the same when I finish grad school (minus the whim part). Turnbull is wonderfully descriptive about life in France, too: this isn't the sort of book where Paris is vaguely in the background. She's in Paris. Improving her language skills by leaps and bounds. Adapting to French ways of eating and socialising.
But, gosh. It's not that I fault her for experiencing culture shock—that's really to be expected. It's part of the theoretical beauty of picking up and moving like that. It takes so long for her to get past it, though: after three years of living in France, she finally decides that she has to 'forget how I did things in Australia and learn a new way of communicating that works in France' (184). That's a long way into the book to come to that realisation, you know? And again, I can't fault her for struggling, but I spent a lot of time wondering why she stayed. Was it the relationship? Because, well, details of the relationship were hazy enough that I wasn't really sure what kept them together, especially given Turnbull's difficulty assimilating. Or was it a faith that things would get easier if she stuck it out? Because I can respect that, except I didn't really see it.
Perhaps I am being unduly harsh. In many ways I was actually glad that she presented a more complex picture than starry-eyed romanticism (we'll get back to those starry eyes in [b:Only in Spain|18565281|Only in Spain A Foot-Stomping, Firecracker of a Memoir about Food, Flamenco, and Falling in Love|Nellie Bennett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400835791s/18565281.jpg|21765402]). And I appreciated her assessment, towards the end, that no matter how long she stays in France she'll never be truly French—that Australia calls to her, sometimes, and that on some level she'll always be an outsider in France. It ends up being, I think, a more complicated book than I originally gave it credit for, with plenty of food for thought.
But, gosh. It's not that I fault her for experiencing culture shock—that's really to be expected. It's part of the theoretical beauty of picking up and moving like that. It takes so long for her to get past it, though: after three years of living in France, she finally decides that she has to 'forget how I did things in Australia and learn a new way of communicating that works in France' (184). That's a long way into the book to come to that realisation, you know? And again, I can't fault her for struggling, but I spent a lot of time wondering why she stayed. Was it the relationship? Because, well, details of the relationship were hazy enough that I wasn't really sure what kept them together, especially given Turnbull's difficulty assimilating. Or was it a faith that things would get easier if she stuck it out? Because I can respect that, except I didn't really see it.
Perhaps I am being unduly harsh. In many ways I was actually glad that she presented a more complex picture than starry-eyed romanticism (we'll get back to those starry eyes in [b:Only in Spain|18565281|Only in Spain A Foot-Stomping, Firecracker of a Memoir about Food, Flamenco, and Falling in Love|Nellie Bennett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400835791s/18565281.jpg|21765402]). And I appreciated her assessment, towards the end, that no matter how long she stays in France she'll never be truly French—that Australia calls to her, sometimes, and that on some level she'll always be an outsider in France. It ends up being, I think, a more complicated book than I originally gave it credit for, with plenty of food for thought.