Almost French, by Sarah Turnbull

Sadly, Paris in July has ended at Thyme for Tea's and BookBath's sites, and I got one last post in, but shame on me...on August 1st!  The wonderful thing about this challenge is that reading books or watching films set in or about Paris has been a real treat and not one that I'll be waiting until next year to dive into on a regular basis -- no excuses needed now to go to J.J.'s Bistro de Paris 10 minutes from me, watching a French film, or diving into Parisian culture through paintings or stories.  What a wonderful month!  Thank you to both of these amazing bloggers for welcoming me into this wonderful journey to Paris, and I cannot wait to do it again next year!

Almost French by Sarah Turnbull is a memoir about the Australian author's time in Paris as she falls in love, learns the culture (or tries to fit in), and tries to get consistent work as a journalist.  Perhaps it was because it was a travel memoir and fitting in that I thought so often of Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, but within pages it held a completely separate voice for me.

Sarah Turnbull has taken time off from her job in Australia to travel Europe -- she figures that she might as well do it now since she can afford to take the time and she has no commitments -- after all, why wait until much later in life when work and family obligations might get in the way?  Off she goes to Europe, and while in Bucharest, she meets Frèdèric, and decides to do something different than she's ever done before and completely change her plans -- go to Paris to stay with a guy that she only met for a few days in Bucharest.  Throwing caution to the wind she goes -- and settles into Paris and tries to find her place within the culture and the job market.

This book is a hit in Australia and it was definitely a really pleasant read.  I enjoyed her moments of confusion in trying to understand fashion and language, and there is one particular moment that I spluttered my coffee out with laughter for my combined shock and for feeling the author's complete embarrassment -- a simple moment in which she asks her new boyfriend in front of his friends if he would like his smoking pipe, when she mistakenly really asked him if he, ahem...would like a blow job.  I felt for her trying to fit in and get used to it all, and as I've traveled quite a bit in my life and lived in multiple locations, I felt my understanding and my frustrations for her experiences grow as I read each page.  It's tough to fit in sometimes!

The only aspect that found me a little wanting was that I felt she wrote with such great detail on so many events and moments, but she skipped quite a bit on the love she had with Frèdèric which was the ultimate reason which compelled her to move to Paris in the first place.  Perhaps it was out of respect for their intimacies (completely understandable) and perhaps I'm just an old romantic at heart, but I felt a tad removed from the blossoming love that they experienced within their relationship that would so compel this grounded and logical woman to completely forgo her plan to travel all of Europe and instead, after one week of meeting with a man, to move instead to Paris to begin life anew.

Sarah Turnbull's descriptions of Parisian life, the eccentric characters she meets in a new neighborhood, and her ability (or lack thereof) to fit in fashionably at first, were quite endearing and offered a fun snapshot into her life.  I cheered for her to find the right job, and enjoyed her journalistic cadence as Turnbull related each event with sometimes a distant voice and sometimes with close up scrutiny, one that ultimately turns into quite a fun trip into Parisian culture!

Again, a thank you (merci!) to Thyme for Tea and to BookBath -- see you next July!

Happy Reading!

Coffee and a Book Chick