Reviews for Dreaming in French

The average rating for Dreaming in French based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-04 00:00:00 Kevin Jones I wish I could give books half stars, I would have given this book 2.5 stars. This book kept me reading, but I could have stopped reading at any time. The beginning of this book reminded me a lot of 'Are you there God? It's me Margret". It was a compelling coming of age story (and I guess the whole book is as Charlotte starts off as a young girl of 15 {who can't wait for her 'monthlies' to start} and ends with her at 30). The book doesn't leave you feeling any sort of hope of her attaining happiness. It alludes to the fact that after going through all sorts of different stages of trying to find herself, she eventually ends up writing for Glamor magazine, and that she is content. But after reading it all, I felt a little depressed. After a string of romances that none end up with her being in love, you get the feeling that due to the relationship that she had with her mother and father (and the effect that their relationship had on her) and one unfortunate romance at the age of 15 she has never given herself the opportunity to love, because she doesn't want to get hurt. I'm not saying that you can't or should be able to live a life single and happy, but she doesn't seem like someone who is fully happy and vibrant with her singleness. Just content. Which may not be a bad thing, but I felt hopeless for her at the end of the book. It just seemed to me that she wanted to have a great loving relationship, whether that be with a man romantically, or a great friendship with her father, with her sister, or with her aunt. All that being said, this author is a great writer. I couldn't find any fault with her writing!

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-14 00:00:00 Robert Wheeler Megan McAndrew's Dreaming in French is the tender, funny and smart story of Charlotte, a teenage girl in 1980's Paris, growing up against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Europe. After the divorce of her American parents, Frank a stuffy, conservative lawyer and Astrid, a bohemian free-spirit, she and her newly penurious mother move to New York where they must start over. Charlotte is forced to mature quickly in order to bring some order into a household badly mismanaged by the extravagant and impractical Astrid. But ultimately, it is a much more daunting challenge that is Charlotte's true right of passage to womanhood. Something about the subject matter and tone very much reminds me of the coming-of-age novels I gravitated to when I was in school. Iris Murdoch's Flight From the Enchanter, Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse and Nora Johnson's The World of Henry Orient all come to mind. It has all the drama of youth with its bigger than life emotions - the yearnings, rebellions and heartaches. And every character, Astrid in particular, is colorful and affectionately rendered. It's refreshing to read a novel where you have no sense that the author is passing judgment on her characters. She merely presents them, warts and all, through the POV of her somewhat ennuyé, but level-headed, narrator, Charlotte, and leaves it up to the reader to form his/her own opinion. As for me, I liked all of them - even a boy who seemed rather caddish at the outset, reveals redeeming qualities by the end. While I mostly enjoyed the book, several minor, but cloying, details were a bit hard to overlook. Astrid, a svelte and fashionable sophisticate, and her sister Maybelle, an overweight polyester-clad yokel, seemed too appropriately named. Almost as if their parents knew in advance what they would grow up to be. I realize this is almost too small to mention, but obvious false notes tend to pull me out of the story somewhat. Plus, the ending is a just a bit too tidy. Although, to be fair, sometimes it's enjoyable to get a satisfying sense of closure…even in literary fiction, which can be quite bleak. I very much enjoyed this book. It brought me back to all my youthful aspirations about one day living a glamorous life in a cosmopolitan center like London, New York or Paris. If you're a fan of such authors as Penelope Fitzgerald, Francoise Sagan or Edna O'Brien, you'll love Dreaming in French.