Civilisation Française by Mary Fleming ~a Review

by Susan Roberts

I'm drawn to books that take place in Paris - sometimes it ends up being a great book and sometimes it doesn't.  This one ended up being a great choice.  It's character-driven driven so there's not a lot of action but what marvelous characters exist in the pages of this book.  Plus there are references and descriptions of places all over Paris which really made me fall in love with it.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

July 2024; Heliotrope Books; 978-1956474503
ebook, print (248 pages); women's fiction

Three women end up living together in a mansion on the Place des Vosges.  Amenia is the owner of the house.  She is an American who moved to Paris years earlier with her French husband.  She is going blind and needs additional help.  Her housekeeper Germaine takes care of her and does the cooking and housekeeper.  She has worked for Amenia for years and they have become great friends.  Amenia's nephew has decided that she needs extra after almost burning the house down and he hires Lily Owens.  Lily is an American who grew up in London but speaks perfect French due to having a French governess.  Lily has moved to Paris for a year to take a class on French civilization.  Since she needed a place to live she decided to apply for the job as a helper.  Amenia is not happy about having someone take care of her because she hasn't accepted how bad her vision has become and she is rude and unbending towards Lily.  As the three women begin to live together,  the reader gradually finds out about Armenia's deceased husband who was a hero during WWII, and about Germaine and the time she spent in a camp during the war.  Lily learns a lot about life.  She yearns to fall in love and has a major crush on one of the members of her class.  When she makes a decision that causes turmoil between the women they all have to face their pasts and discover a future where they can learn the meaning of home.

I will warn you that this book starts out very slowly and in the beginning, Germaine was the only character that I liked.  However, as I kept reading and learned more about the past of the two other women, I began to understand them and the way that they faced life and I hated to say goodbye to all three women at the end of the book.

Buy Civilisation Francaise at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is two hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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