Lessons In French By Hilary Reyl

[amazon_link id=”0007446268″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’Lessons in French’ is Hilary Reyl’s first book.

It’s 1989 and Kate has just graduated from Yale, with no idea how to pursue life as a fledging painter. So when she receives a job offer to work as the assistant to Lydia Schell, a famous American photographer in Paris, she jumps at the chance. Kate may speak fluent French thanks to the two years she spent living there with cousins while her father was dying – but she is thoroughly unprepared for the seductive power of the Schell household, where Umberto Eco or Henri Cartier-Bresson might just drop by for dinner. Her boss, the oh-so charming Lydia turns out to be the boss from hell. The ‘little bit of everything’ includes collecting under the counter diet pills and a walking a flatulent dog around round the rainy streets of sixth arrondissement. And the gorgeous Olivier? He happens to be dating Lydia’s daughter. As Kate rediscovers Paris and her roots there and forges her own makeshift family out of her friends, she begins to question the kindness of these people to whom she is so drawn, as well as her own motives for wanting them to love her.

There is nothing as bad as reading a book that you don’t enjoy and sadly this was the case with ‘Lessons in French’

With a book that had so much potential, I struggled to read this story from the every start and was disappointed by how little it held my attention. Initially the story is set in Paris, where Kate has been given a job to be the house maid/personal assistant to Lydia Schell, a hugely dislikable and controversial photographer, her husband Clarence who is trying unsuccessfully to complete a fashion book, their daughter Portia, heartbroken and lovesick and their son Joshua who wants to join the revolution.

Seen solely through the eyes of Kate, we join her on her journey dealing with irrational, sad and eccentric characters, a life that never seems to stop and with a circle of party loving friends, there never seems to be a dull moment. As this story is about a girl who is working for a bit of a demanding boss, I found myself regularly reflecting back to ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ where instead of a high power editor, there is a political photographer, it felt like Lydia was a poor version of Miranda Priestly who sometimes didn’t seem as bad as the famous villain. Although I found Lydia to quite vile character, regularly manipulating all those around her, there were no characters in the book that I found myself warming to. It seemed that the book was constantly about the battle of egos, each character trying to outdo and hurt each other, as they all strived to inflict conflict. The only character that I enjoyed was Étienne, Kate’s French cousin and jewellery designer, who Katie remembers as bullying her when they were children. But years later, he apologises for his behaviour. I found him to be a bit of charming sweetheart of the story with his flamboyant style and manner, he added a bit of flair to this tale.

Other reasons that I couldn’t warm to the book was as the story was set in Paris, the characters would regularly speak French and there were no translations and as I don’t speak French I found myself skimming over these parts, so there were times when you were left out of the story. Also occasionally, there were no clear division to show who was speaking, so I sometimes found myself losing track with the characters and the storyline.

With one of the prettiest covers of this year and set in one of my favourite cities in the world, ‘Lessons in French’ had the potential to be great but regrettably it wasn’t the book for me.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”0007446268″ target=”_blank” ]Lessons in French from Amazon [/amazon_link]and is available to buy from good bookshops.