CIVILISATION FRANÇAISE
by Mary Fleming
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Pub Date 16 Jul 2024 | Archive Date 12 Aug 2024
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Description
When recent college graduate Lily Owens enrolls in the Civilisation Française course at the Sorbonne in 1982, she hopes to put a difficult childhood behind her and to find direction for adulthood.
She moves into an historic mansion on the place des Vosges where her job is helping elderly, half-blind Amenia Quinon, another ex-pat American. Unbeknownst to Lily, Amenia is haunted by memories of World War II, as is her Jewish housekeeper, Germaine. The three women live alone in this house of silence and secrets, mostly revolving in their own worlds, until Lily surreptitiously lets her friend, Thibaud, move into the empty wing. When Thibaud lets in others, the abandoned part of the house quickly turns into a squat, causing turmoil and distress among the three women, but ultimately bringing them closer together.
CIVILISATION FRANÇAISE is an engrossing, powerful story about facing our past, discovering a future and the meaning of home.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
“In Mary Fleming’s absorbing and affecting novel, a young American takes a course in French civilization and learns more than she bargains for – about sex, cooking, and a family’s unhappy past – and is e better for it. So is the reader.”
—Lily Tuck, author of The News from Paraguay and winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
“Mary Fleming brings a fresh, tragicomic view to the Américaine-in-Paris Novel, exploring the intertwined lives of two expatriates: a rich widow haunted by World War II, and a young woman struggling to overcome a traumatic childhood. Civilisation Française is eloquent, erudite and entertaining.”
—Jake Lamar, author of Viper’s Dream and Rendezvous Eighteenth
“Two women live uneasily on separate floors of a decrepit mansion in Paris. The younger can't envision any future for herself. The older woman's wish to live is failing. Mary Fleming weaves their stories together in Civilisation Française, a haunting novel about the pull of time past and future, and the courage to live fully one's life and death.”
—Laura Furman, author of Tuxedo Park and The Mother Who Stayed
“…with her deep knowledge of French manners and mores and mischievous sense of humor, Fleming turns the classic situation on its head. There were so many things I loved about this book: the fresh way Lily moves forward as she observes Paris and its markets and cafés and French men in contrast to her prickly employer who moves backward with her souvenirs of vanished times, good and bad; the secrets, large and small, that the characters live with and keep from one another; the complexity and the burden of French history that governs all…. Skillfully crafted and elegant, Civilisation Francaise is a work of grande classe.”
—Harriet Welty Rochefort, author of French Toast and Final Transgression
"Anyone who has spent her junior year abroad (or not) will love this Balzacian tale of a dark old house in Paris, a powerful old woman, strangely closed-off rooms, and a young American heroine with whom to explore the mysteries of French culture. This book will either take you back or introduce you afresh to the wonders of French life.”
—Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce, Le Mariage and L’Affaire
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781956474503 |
| PRICE | US$18.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 248 |
