What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind - Softcover

Ollivier, Debra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 042523648X ISBN 13: 9780425236482

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2010

Synopsis

The Los Angeles Times bestseller! "A Gallic prescription for living a life that is richer, more sensual, messier, and a lot more fun" (Boston Globe)

It's not the shoes, the scarves, or the lipstick that gives French women their allure. It's this: French women don't give a damn. They don't expect men to understand them. They don't care about being liked or being like everyone else. They accept the passage of time, celebrate the immediacy of pleasure, embrace ambiguity and imperfection, and prefer having a life to making a living.

In What French Women Know, Debra Ollivier goes beyond stale ooh- la-la stereotypes, challenging ingrained notions about sex, love, marriage, motherhood, and everything in between. With savvy, provocative thinking from French mistresses and maidens alike, Ollivier presents a refreshing counterpoint to the tired love dogma of our times, and offers realistic, liberating alternatives from the land that knows how to love.

About this title

About the Author

Debra Ollivier is the bestselling author of What French Women Know and Entre Nous. She was raised in Los Angeles and attended UCLA and the Sorbonne where she received degrees in French literature. Her writing has appeared in several publications including The Guardian, Le Monde, and Harper’s Magazine. Ollivier spent more than 10 years in Paris before returning to California.

From AudioFile

Ollivier compares stereotypes of American women (whom she does not appear to care for or respect) with stereotypes of French women, with emphasis on how each relates to and interacts with men. She liberally relies on quotes from French writers, intellectuals, and philosophers in her description of French women but looks primarily to Hollywood movies and television, as well as other aspects of pop culture, to describe American women. As narrator, she gives an adequate reading but would be well served by varying her pace and using pauses judiciously as she falls into a singsong cadence at times. A snippet of a stereotypical French music is used to separate chapters but seems contrary to the serious intent of Ollivier's cultural observations. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 042523648X
• ISBN 13: 9780425236482
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272