- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition (Dec 14 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1416599738
- ISBN-13: 978-1416599739
- Product Dimensions: 21.5 x 14.1 x 1.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“McAndrew can do cross-cultural humor with the flair of Diane Johnson, but she also has her own kind of sophistication—an international knowingness coupled with an American practicality.”
--The New York Times
“McAndrew has immense talent for calling up vastly different settings in precise detail, and her observations, as realized by her clear-eyed protagonist, are deliciously sharp-edged. Dense with context and deeply nuanced, yet effortlessly readable. McAndrew is a real find.”
--Kirkus Reviews
“A sophisticated coming-of-age story.”
--Daily Candy
“McAndrew's casual but assured depictions of life among the upper crust of Paris and New York and wry voice, make this coming-of-age novel a delectable treat.
--Publishers Weekly
“McAndrew’s novel brings an original sensibility as well as a plot that takes satisfying, unexpected turns.”
--The New York Times
Product Description
CHARLOTTE SANDERS, a precocious American girl growing up in Paris in the late 1970s, leads a charmed life. But her idyllic childhood is turned upside down when her mother, Astrid, has an affair and the family is shattered. Leaving her sister in Paris, Charlotte follows Astrid to New York. There, in the shadow of her glamorous and erratic mother, Charlotte has to negotiate her path to womanhood, eventually living through her own unhappy love affair and returning to a Europe that has been reshaped by the downfall of Communism.
At once a coming-of-age story and meditation on cultural identity, Dreaming in French is an enchanting portrayal of the challenges of adolescence and an honest account of one girl’s discovery that where we come from makes us who we are.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tender, Funny and Smart, Mar 22 2010
By Blake Fraina - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Dreaming in French: A Novel (Hardcover)
Megan McAndrew's Dreaming in French is the tender, funny and smart story of Charlotte, a teenage girl in 1980's Paris, growing up against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Europe. After the divorce of her American parents, Frank a stuffy, conservative lawyer and Astrid, a bohemian free-spirit, she and her newly penurious mother move to New York where they must start over. Charlotte is forced to mature quickly in order to bring some order into a household badly mismanaged by the extravagant and impractical Astrid. But ultimately, it is a much more daunting challenge that is Charlotte's true right of passage to womanhood.Something about the subject matter and tone very much reminds me of the coming-of-age novels I gravitated to when I was in school. Iris Murdoch's Flight From the Enchanter, Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse and Nora Johnson's The World of Henry Orient all come to mind. It has all the drama of youth with its bigger than life emotions - the yearnings, rebellions and heartaches. And every character, Astrid in particular, is colorful and affectionately rendered. It's refreshing to read a novel where you have no sense that the author is passing judgment on her characters. She merely presents them, warts and all, through the POV of her somewhat ennuyé, but level-headed, narrator, Charlotte, and leaves it up to the reader to form his/her own opinion. As for me, I liked all of them - even a boy who seemed rather caddish at the outset, reveals redeeming qualities by the end.
While I mostly enjoyed the book, several minor, but cloying, details were a bit hard to overlook. Astrid, a svelte and fashionable sophisticate, and her sister Maybelle, an overweight polyester-clad yokel, seemed too appropriately named. Almost as if their parents knew in advance what they would grow up to be. I realize this is almost too small to mention, but obvious false notes tend to pull me out of the story somewhat. Plus, the ending is a just a bit too tidy. Although, to be fair, sometimes it's enjoyable to get a satisfying sense of closure...even in literary fiction, which can be quite bleak.
I very much enjoyed this book. It brought me back to all my youthful aspirations about one day living a glamorous life in a cosmopolitan center like London, New York or Paris. If you're a fan of such authors as Penelope Fitzgerald, Francoise Sagan, Iris Murdoch or Edna O'Brien, you'll love Dreaming in French.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Authentic and well-written, Mar 31 2010
By Anonymous - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Dreaming in French: A Novel (Hardcover)
I picked up this book a bit hesitantly. I grew up in Paris in the seventies and I have often been disappointed (even infuriated) by some American writers writing about France without apparently ever having set foot there. When a character who is supposedly native makes basic French mistakes ("Avons la petit-dejeuner!") you know you're wasting your time. McAndrews is not one of those authors. I could tell right away that she had spent a good deal of her childhood in Paris, and not a single detail felt inauthentic. In addition, the story is gripping and extremely well-written. You just can't go wrong buying this book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
American expats in Paris, April 19 2012
By April England - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
When I ordered this book, I expected something amusing about living in Paris. However, having read it, I find myself thinking about it more than a week later. It is a coming-of-age story, but what sets it apart is how well it shows that our perceptions change as we mature. Even people we think of as uncomplicated reveal different facets of themselves through the years. Charlotte, a student in a "collège," has a comfortable life in Paris. Her father is a successful businessman, her mother stylish ("even though" she is from Kentucky--there are some stylish women in Kentucky!), and her older sister, in spite of sibling rivalries, is her friend. Her problem at the beginning is Delphine, the daughter of an American woman and a Frenchman. Delphine has been her friend since early childhood, but now that puberty has set in, she is far more interested in boys than Charlotte is.The reader can see from the beginning cracks in Charlotte's life that she cannot. Her mother seems to spend an inordinate amount of time with her best friend, Grace, who is unhappily married to a Frenchman who has mistresses. Grace herself has a lover. Astrid, Charlotte's mother, remains an enigmatic figure. Her absences worry her daughter but her father does not seem to mind, preferring to spend his evenings reading. Astrid has taken up causes, such as Polish independence from the Soviet Union. The story is firmly anchored in its time and place. Charlotte's world will undergo a shock that changes her sense of her identity and how she sees everyone around her. It is interesting to watch how Charlotte deals with the upheavals and whether she lands on her feet.
I enjoyed the novel very much, especially the picture of the American expatriate community, which, other than a few men, lacked very many French characters. In fact, some of the people in Charlotte's entourage were not even at ease speaking French.
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