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A French Affair
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A French Affair - 1999

by Mary Blume


Details

  • Title A French Affair
  • Author Mary Blume
  • Publisher Simon and Schuster
  • Date 1999-11-05
  • ISBN 9781439136386

Media reviews

Jane Kramer

European correspondent, The New Yorker

Mary Blume writes like an angel and thinks like a devil -- which the French will tell you is the hallmark of a civilized mind. Reading Blume, I like to imagine Montaigne or Montesquieu curled up somewhere with the same story and a glass of, say, Diamond Creek cabernet, savoring both, trusting both, enchanted to discover that the new world of their dark and most exotic fantasies had finally produced such remarkably kindred clarity and style. Blume is the one American writing in Paris who comes anywhere close to the great essayist tradition that once defined the culture but that most native Parisians have in fact lost -- one that proceeds from wit, wisdom, erudition, and above all from an understanding that the deepest ironies are gentle, and amount to an embrace that includes us all, in our folly, faults, and poignant, blundering affectation.