A String of French Romances

A Review of Camille Cusumano's Compilation France, A Love Story

Sep 27, 2009

Real American women document their adventures in France in this compilation of 25 tales of risk, regret, love, war, goodbyes, transgression, and healing.

A country that has long romanced the American imagination, France furnishes the backdrop for France, A Love Story: Women Write About the French Experience, a collection of narratives by American female writers, documenting their most intimate encounters with the country, its cuisine, and its people.

Each vignette provides a colorful snapshot of life en France from a foreigner’s perspective: the “acid sweetness” of the French “refusal to ingratiate”, how the secret behind a good vinegar is a veritable family heirloom, the fact that non-native tenants may find French neighbors harvesting truffles right off their land and out from under their noses, or the ecstasy of sampling brouillade aux truffes which Ruth Riechl swears is what sex would taste like. In general, they are stories of discovering life, oneself and one’s place in life, and – as all travel stories are – tinged with that poignant attachment to place that often haunts the human experience.

The Joy of Living

Diane LeBow offers what might be the most memorable passage of the book, in her story The Fisher Baron’s Secret. The protagonist is about to end her two-year stay in Paris, and the lover she has found there, to return to her job in San Francisco when her cab driver scolds her for leaving. “What matters in life is that you make love to someone you care about on Sunday morning and walk out with them on Sunday afternoon…It’s not good to live your life alone” (Cusumano, 31). The best things in life are the simple pleasures, which should be given time and space in our existence. They are that which keeps us young, what the French call joie de vivre.

Embarrassing Moments

Some of the twenty-five entries in France: A Love Story are crafted rather forgettably, failing to engage the reader. A few writers sparkle. “I was wildly in love, flush with an infatuation as delicious and short-lived as the bead of nectar squeezed from a honeysuckle blossom” writes Ayun Halliday in Paris Lip (166). Equally visual but uproariously funny is the hook of Rikke Jorgensen’s The Dirt on French Service: “‘There’s a pubic hair in my pasta,’ I said calmly, with as much dignity as I could muster'” (263). Every writer dreams of pulling first-liners like the latter; as a reader one is helpless to do anything but read further.

A Sense of Escape

France, A Love Story is not a riveting read, but more like a quiet stroll along the Seine. While a few tales are adventures; most are quieter musings of women wandering their own internal labyrinths as they traverse a foreign land. That glorious sense of liminality is perhaps part of what makes travel accounts appealing even when they are not fraught with danger and suspense. As Judy Kronenfeld writes in the closing story Speaking French: “That dislocating strangeness, that suspension in time and space, is what one travels for; it gives us permission to not worry about our usual responsibilities, and to imagine change” (280). Perhaps that is what Camille Cusumano offers her readers through this anthology—a string of postcards reminding us that life can indeed be different in the best sense, simpler, fuller, and more romantic in every way.

For more books by Camille Cusumano, visit her website at www.camillecusumano.com.

The copyright of the article A String of French Romances in Travel Books is owned by Katelyn Aronson. Permission to republish A String of French Romances in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.