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Overview
From the author of the acclaimed bestseller and 1997 National Book Award finalist, Le Divorce, comes a sparkling comedy of manners once again set in the world of Americans in Paris.Anne-Sophie is a young Frenchwoman engaged to Tim Nolinger, an American journalist hot on the trail of a breaking story: The theft of a valuable illuminated manuscript from a private collection in New York, which may now be in the possession of a reclusive film director living on the outskirts of Paris. As Tim, Anne-Sophie, a pair of American antique dealers, and one amorous member of the local gentry converge on the director's chateau, the director's wife--a former actress--is accused of desecrating a national monument. Add to that a disappearing American; a hunting contretemps; a wrongful arrest; and murder, and you have this sexy, stylish, delight of a novel that celebrates the paradoxes of marriage and morality as they are perceived on both sides of the Atlantic. Filled with the author's pithy insights and hilarious asides, Le Mariage is Diane Johnson at her very best.
Synopsis
A sparkling new novel-a comedy of manners from the author of Le Divorce, an acclaimed national bestseller and 1997 National Book Award finalist
Many have compared Diane Johnson to such great literary figures as Jane Austen, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and F. Scott Fitzgerald-all expatriate writers who in one way or another contributed to the development of the "international novel." Johnson puts a contemporary twist on this venerable form with her keen-eye portraits of modern-day Americans living abroad.
In Le Mariage, as in Le Divorce, she masterly portrays Paris-both its outward splendor and its secret inner workings. Le Mariage introduces a proper young French woman engaged to a struggling American journalist hot on the trail of a breaking story: the theft of a valuable illuminated manuscript from a collection in New York, which rumor has it may have found its surreptitious way into the hands of a reclusive film director living on the outskirts of Paris. The director's wife, an American beauty and former actress, enters a Kafkaesque nightmare as she finds herself wrongly accused of desecrating a national monument. Johnson's clever plot and delightful characters are to be savored, but Le Mariage also offers brilliant insights into relationships between men and women; marriage and morality as it is perceived on both sides of the Atlantic; and the chaos that ensues when well-off, well-meaning people attempt to give something back to an imperfect world that has been so unaccountably good to them. Le Mariage is Diane Johnson at her very best.
New Yorker
In the end, it's Johnson's insights that account for the charm of these books ... Her novels, of course, retained the characteristic mixture of earthly sensuality and astute judgments about human nature that had made her reputation."—April 10, 2000
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Marriage Admits ImpedimentsThe great European novelists of the 19th century often took marriage as their topic. For Tolstoy, marriage was a lonely affair; for Flaubert, a tragic one. In America, it was a different case. Readers would be hard-pressed to find more than a casual reference to marriage in Melville. The 20th century, in turn, produced very few great novels of marriage on either continent, so concerned with the individual were that period's novelists. Yet if Diane Johnson's excellent new novel, Le Mariage, is any indication, church bells will be ringing loudly again in the 21st century.
It is appropriate that Johnson should be the one to return to the hallowed state of matrimony. An American who divides her time between San Francisco and Paris, she writes with the sweep and understanding of a modern Tolstoy, skillfully penetrating into the minds of each and every one of her characters. But Johnson's sense of humor is distinctly American: Her characters suffer from comedic bouts of self-consciousness; her plot never misses a chance to delve into the bizarre, even ludicrous elements of the modern world.
And Johnson is no stranger to the material. Her previous novel, Le Divorce, a modern comedy of manners that centers on the breakup of a Franco-American union, was a 1997 National Book Award finalist. This ground—Paris, the clashing of old and new cultures, and the vicissitudes of married life—belongs to Diane Johnson.
Le Mariage is essentially the story of the events leading up to the marriage of Tim Nolinger, an American journalist living in Paris, and Anne-Sophie d'Argel, a beautiful young French woman who sells equestrian art at the flea market. Nolinger is the quintessential dispassionate American: He is a contributor to two American magazines, Reliance, a conservative journal, and Concern, a liberal one. When asked how he manages the contradiction, Tim simply shrugs, "I can see both sides" (though he uses only his initials, TAN, in articles for the liberals). Anne-Sophie, on the other hand, is a picture of Frenchness.
As the novel begins, Tim has been tipped off to a case involving a medieval manuscript stolen from the Morgan Library in New York, somehow linked to a mysterious murder that takes place in the first few pages. The case leads him to make the acquaintance of Serge Cray, a famous American film director living in seclusion outside of Paris, and Cray's beautiful wife, Clara Holly, an actress from Oregon. The Crays' marriage is in the last stages of decline. Their passion for each other, such as it may have been, has cooled, and Anne-Sophie and Tim look on them with fear and anxiety, thinking and rethinking their own imminent nuptuals.
The sequence of couples is complete when Delia and Gabriel, vacationing Oregonians who are somehow mixed up in the stolen manuscript/murder case, arrive. Gabriel disappears, and Delia, who walks with a limp, joins up with the two married couples, lending the lethargic air of an immovable tourist to their increasingly chaotic affairs. The Crays get drawn into an internationally publicized hunting controversy; Clara Holly falls in love with her neighbor; Serge Cray becomes obsessed with Delia's ties to the Y2K secessionist movement in Oregon, about which he plans to make a film; Tim and Anne-Sophie struggle to find an apartment; and Gabriel is arrested. Meanwhile, the wedding date is fast approaching. (Le Mariage is welcome comic relief for frantic wedding planners: Nothing could be more stressful than this one.)
Johnson negotiates her complex plot with mastery. There are no dead subplots in the novel. With the grace of a Tolstoy, she tends to each of her character's inner lives. We are privy to Serge Cray's artistic turmoil, Clara Holly's desperation for her lost youth, Tim's pragmatic self-haranguing dread, Anne-Sophie's linguistic concerns (which lead her to read Henry Miller, hunting for words like "horny" and "fuck"), and Delia's innocent self-righteousness. Johnson writes with what can only be called, considering her subject matter, joie de vivre—she clearly loves Paris and all the people and situations it contains.
Perhaps this is what lends her novel its 19th-century qualities; like Tolstoy and Flaubert, Johnson has the broad mind of a writer who loves and is interested in all classes of people. Like Tim, she can see both sides of every situation and doesn't balk at portraying them all.
Johnson also has a great feel for the contemporary French milieu, particularly for the Americans who live in France—princesses from Cincinnati, rich expatriates, art collectors—all of whom are trying to live like the French yet secretly believe themselves superior to them. Johnson writes with a knowledge of these situations that can only be firsthand, yet readers who have never crossed the Atlantic will know immediately how to regard them. Like others in the long tradition of American expatriate writers in Paris, Johnson has used her dual allegiance to escape the pitfalls of both cultures and produce a book that portrays each one with severity, perception, and humor.
—J.P. Silverstein
J. P. Silverstein lives in Marfa, Texas.
About the Author
Diane Johnson is the author of the bestselling novel Le Divorce, a 1997 National Book Award finalist, as well as 11 other books. She divides her time between San Francisco and Paris.
New Yorker
In the end, it's Johnson's insights that account for the charm of these books ... Her novels, of course, retained the characteristic mixture of earthly sensuality and astute judgments about human nature that had made her reputation."—April 10, 2000New York Post
At her best - and 'Le Mariage' is certainly that - Johnson's juggles a cleaver plot and complex characters with both wit and soul."—April 2, 2000Publishers Weekly -
Even more knowing and perceptive than Le Divorce, Johnson's second novel about American expatriates in France is another wickedly clever comedy of manners. Her amused irony infuses this story of two romantic relationships. Good-natured Tim Nolinger, an easygoing journalist of mixed American and Belgian ancestry, is engaged to adorable Anne-Sophie d'Arget, who runs a boutique selling equestrian memorabilia in the Paris flea market. When Tim pursues a story about a stolen medieval manuscript called the Driad Apocalypse, their lives intersect with those of a former American film star, Clara Holly, and her husband, famous and reclusive director Serge Cray, who live in a ch teau in the suburbs of Paris. Peripheral characters include Anne-Sophie's mother, a cynical Parisienne novelist whose romance novels contain platitudinous advice about love that her daughter takes seriously; various members of the American community in Paris; the villagers of Etang-la-reine, who resent the rich property owners from the States and whose anger about the loss of their hunting rights triggers a plot against the Crays; two visitors from Clara's hometown in Oregon, and the members of a millennium cult there, who are pivotal in the drama of the purloined papers. What will be even more satisfying to Johnson's fans is the appearance of a character from Le Divorce, the dashing Antoine de Persand. In six degrees of separation, everybody is connected, yet the coincidences are artfully managed. Johnson's crisp manipulation of the engagingly convoluted plot is rooted in her central theme of French misconceptions about Americans, and vice versa. As exemplified by Holly and Cray, even those who share the same culture habitually fail to estimate the other accurately. Johnson's barbs are sophisticated and sharp, her amused irony is easily maintained, and her finesse at narrative is as fine tuned as her cultural sensitivity and her instincts about human behavior. As the novel ends, it is not surprising that le mariage of Anne-Sophie and Tim seems doomed by misunderstandings, but an adulterous liaison between two other characters conveys the mesmerizing passion of true love. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|Library Journal
Like Henry James and Edith Wharton, Johnson's most recent novels Persian Nights, Le Divorce have explored the cultural misunderstandings between the sophisticated Old World Iran, France and the brash yet na ve New World America--but without the tortuous Jamesian prose and with a contemporary satirical wit. Her latest, Le Mariage, is a delightful companion, rather than a sequel, to the National Book Award-nominated Le Divorce. Set again in Paris with a few overlapping characters, the plot revolves around two couples--Tim Nolinger, an Belgian American journalist engaged to the very French Anne-Sophie, a dealer in equine collectibles; and the very beautiful American Clara, a former actress married to the reclusive film director Serge Clay. Thrown into the entertaining mix is a stolen illuminated manuscript, a murdered flea market dealer, Y2K cults, an adulterous liaison, and of course Johnson's perceptive and witty insights on love, marriage, and Anglo-French relations. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/99.]--Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\Angeline Goreau
Johnson, one of our most astute cultural critics, is conveying a message about the anything-goes dishevelment of modern life . . . A splendid entertainment, decorated with speculations of a redeeming nature.—The New York Times Book Review
Hawthorne
Like Jane Austen, Johnson delights in the worldly rituals surrounding courtship and marriage, but she is just as interested in the far-reaching legal consequences of marital unions and disunions, and in what laws can reveal about the cultures they are enlisted to defend.&151;The New Yorker