About this Item
1st Printing. Signed. 322 pages. Published in 2000. The author's ninth novel. One of Diane Johnson's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Diane Johnson's "Le Mariage". A delicious treat. The sequel-of-sorts to "Le Divorce", the bestseller that belatedly and deservedly established Diane Johnson's international reputation. Continues the author's piquant observations of domestic bliss and sorrow in a novel that is replete with interesting characters, enchanting settings, and the most intricate plot turns: Hostage taking, murder, and most rewardingly, erotic encounters of the most delicious kind. An absolute "must-have" title for Diane Johnson collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in blue ink-pen on the title page by Diane Johnson. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a late-modern classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. One of the finest American writers of our time. A fine copy. ISBN 0525945180. Seller Inventory # 1476
Bibliographic Details
Title: LE MARIAGE - Scarce Fine Copy of The First ...
Publisher: New York City, NY: Dutton, 2000
Publication Date: 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
Signed: Signed by Author
Edition: 1st Edition.
About this title
The story centers, like Anna Karenina, around two couples. Anne-Sophie, a bon chic, bon genre Parisienne who sells equestrian-themed antiques at the flea market, is engaged to Tim, an American journalist, "one of those large pink-cheeked rugby-player types." Clara, also an American, is a film actress married to her director, the brilliant Serge Cray. The two lead a reclusive life on the outskirts of Paris until their serenity is broken by a couple of events: following a well-publicized murder, a couple of American tourists drop in on the Crays and won't leave; and Clara is arrested for desecrating a national monument, when all she was trying to do was decorate her house.
These various settings--the flea market, the director's chateau, even the jail--allow Johnson ample room for the kind of Francophile fieldwork for which she is so justly famed. The engaged couple in particular provide lots of scope for details of Paris life: "One particular day, Tim suddenly knew he had found their apartment, on the Passage de la Visitation--the name itself so charming, the arrondissement so correct.... His heart lifted with the optimistic sense of the future that only real estate can bring." Minor characters abound, such as Anne-Sophie's mother, who writes the sort of hilariously intellectual dirty novels only the French can produce. Johnson delights in identifying such types, and sends them up with relish.
As in Le Divorce, Johnson delivers a trumped-up ending--this time at the Crays' chateau, where the rehearsal dinner for Anne-Sophie and Tim's wedding turns into a genteel French shootout--or, rather, standoff. The author has earned her finale this time, though. At the beginning, she asks the question that haunts all innocents-abroad novels: "Perhaps there are no natural contradictions between the French landscape and the Americans who inhabit it so diffidently, but it often seems that Americans would do well to stay out of what we do not understand. Or is it we who bring the harm?" This time, more explicitly than ever, Diane Johnson makes her answer an emphatic yes. And in doing so, she lays claim to the legacy of Henry James that has been linked with her name since Le Divorce. --Claire Dederer
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