Lessons in French: A Novel - Softcover

Reyl, Hilary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 145168794X ISBN 13: 9781451687941

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2014

Synopsis

An evocative, coming-of-age story about a Yale graduate’s year in Paris as an assistant to a legendary American photographer: “An appealing debut novel” (Oprah.com, Editor’s Pick).

It’s 1989, the Berlin Wall is coming down, and Kate has just graduated from Yale, eager to pursue her dreams as a fledgling painter. When she is offered a job as the assistant to Lydia Schell, a famous American photographer in Paris, she immediately accepts. It’s a chance not only to be at the center of the art world, but to return to France for the first time since, as a lonely nine-year-old girl, she was sent to the outskirts of Paris to live with cousins while her father was dying.

Kate may speak fluent French, but she arrives at the Schell household in the fashionable Sixth Arrondissement both overwhelmed and naïve. She finds herself surrounded by a seductive cast of characters: the members of the bright, pretentious family with whom she boards, their assortment of famous friends, Kate’s own flamboyant cousin, a fellow Yalie who seems to have it all figured out, and a bande of independently wealthy young men with royal lineage. As Kate rediscovers Paris and her roots there, she begins to question the kindness of the glamorous people to whom she is so drawn as well as her own motives in wanting their affection.

In compelling and sympathetic prose, Hilary Reyl perfectly captures this portrait of a precocious, ambitious young woman struggling to define herself in a vibrant world that spirals out of her control. Lessons in French is “rich and magnetic, a snapshot of one young woman’s life in a city at once ancient and bubbling over with life” (Booklist).

About this title

Review:

Guest Review of “Lesson in French”

By Paula McLain

Can you ever have enough Paris? Obviously not, and though Hilary Reyl’s engaging Lessons in French is set in 1989, nearly seventy years after Ernest and Hadley Hemingway caroused with their Bohemian set, Reyl’s layered, sumptuous and spot-on details had me ready to buy a ticket to her Paris from page one.

In many ways, Kate is any young woman trying to figure out who she is amid the push and pull of others, but her new assistantship with the wildly glamorous and neurotic photographer, Lydia Schell, adds considerable torque in both directions. So does Lydia’s impossibly dysfunctional family.

Granted, the trappings are delicious—a chambre de bonne in the chic sixth arrondissement, promised elbow rubbing with Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie, and the satisfaction of being indispensable to Lydia and her loved ones. The reality is so much more draining and dicey. Nearly all of her pittance of a salary pays her rent, and Lydia expects not just the work Katie was hired to do, but dog walking, schlepping out for spring rolls and strange diet pills—oh, and blind gratitude and unquestioning loyalty to boot. But Lydia’s a genius, right, doing socially important work? And who is Katie to stand up to her?

Who is Katie becomes the question of the book, and the thing that keeps us turning pages. Her principal gift, she tells us early on, is to reflect others back beautifully, and we see that emotional mirroring over and over in her. In trying to please everyone, to be endlessly diplomatic and necessary and reliable, Kate gets blurrier and more disoriented. In completing others, she loses herself—and what will that malleability cost her, in the end?

I found Kate absolutely believable and familiar as a character (I know that girl, haven’t we all been that girl?) and that—coupled with the sublime setting—was a winning combination for me. Paris isn’t mere seasoning in this debut novel, but a seven-course meal.

Like her heroine, Hilary Reyl spent considerable time in the City of Light, and one has the feeling that the book is a labor of love for the author, a way of paying homage to what she herself gained and lost in Paris, and to immortalize that experience in story. This is a wonderful first novel. Savor it with crème-filled croissants and peach kir, and prepare to be transported.

About the Author:

Hilary Reyl has a PhD in French literature from NYU with a focus on the nineteenth century and has spent several years working and studying in France. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 145168794X
• ISBN 13: 9781451687941
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368