CIVILISATION FRANÇAISE

Two American women of different generations try to make sense of their lives in 1980s Paris.

It’s 1982, and Lily Owens, raised in London by American parents, has graduated from university. Her sister, Maude, suggests she brush up on her French, live in Paris for a year, and take a course on French civilization. In France, Lily meets Octave de Malbert, a Frenchman looking for an au pair for his aging aunt, Amenia Quinon, who has a degenerative eye disease and lives in an enormous house Octave hopes to inherit. Amenia has lived in Paris for 65 years, having married a rich Frenchman, François, whom she met on her family’s ranch in Wyoming. Amenia is initially cold to Lily. At her program, the recent college grad befriends two Americans, who introduce Lily to Thibaud, a French law student hoping to leave France for the United States. Amenia’s large, mostly empty house sits in what had been Jewish ghetto prior to World War II, and Lily essentially allows Thibaud to squat there. The narrative switches between Amenia’s and Lily’s perspectives, and though their relationship is tense, they’re mirrors and inversions of each other. Amenia escaped her old life yet becomes more and more obsessed with her past, while Lily, looking to form relationships in France, worries about her future. Unfortunately, this dynamic goes largely unexplored in favor of other struggles, Amenia with the grief and guilt she feels over François and her political inaction during the Holocaust, and Lily with Thibaud as he invites more squatters into the house. There are some compelling passages, largely concerning Paris’ Jewish history. Fleming’s prose, however, tends toward dull exposition: “I’ve always believed my mother would have been a happier individual if she hadn’t married my father. Because she wasn’t in love with him but with his parents, or at least what his parents appeared to be....Their lack of common interest was a recipe for dissatisfaction, unhappiness.” Still, the setup is intriguing, and readers will want to know the intertwined fates of the two leads, the interloper, and the French mansion.

A compelling premise dimmed by flawed exposition.