Le Mariage

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Read!
Review: This is the second book that I've read by Ms. Johnson and I find her form of writing to be at times witty and then at times to be very confusing and well...dry. For the most part I did enjoy this read. She has great imagination when it comes to her character's as well as her storylines. I almost felt as if I had stepped into a soap opera. For a light read you can't go wrong with this author.

Rating:
Summary: catalogue writing without merit
Review: What more need be said? I wish room could be made for real writers by bumping ones such as Ms. Johnson from publishers' lists.

Rating:
Summary: Redeemed by adultery -- a morality play
Review: While "Le Mariage" is no masterpiece, it is nonetheless an interesting novel, and not as bad a piece of work as some of these reviews would suggest.

Inevitably, it has to be compared with "Le Divorce", a more perfect achievement. In fact it is conceived, I believe, as a conterpoint or antithesis to that earlier work, and is intended to be read as such on some level.

In both novels we have various male members (ahem) of the de Persand family carrying on sexual relationships with American women. Central to "Le Divorce" is the outside affair that leads to the dissolution of the American heroine's marriage, and eventually to the murder of the "sinning" de Persand. BAD adultery... In "Le Mariage" another de Persand saves another American heroine from a loveless marriage with a cold, manipulative heel. GOOD adultery...

In fact, Ms. Johnson's thesis in "Le Mariage" is that true love, whether blessed by clergy or not, is more important and sacred than social convention -- not a new thought by any means, but intelligently and deftly worked out in this book. The allusions to the medieval literature of courtly love, which glorifies extramarital passion, are even made overt by the author in one of her chapters. Here, the heroine is a kind of saint on the altar of chevaleresque values (Clare Holly = Illuminated Holiness) and her transcendance and transfiguration take place in the bedroom with her lover. Their "aura" is stronger and truer than that of the other Franco-American couple who go through with the "legitimate", but nonetheless shaky and uncertain church marriage that is the book's erstwhile subject. Personally, I believe that the real "marriage" described in the title is the physical/spiritual union of Antoine and Clare, not the erstwhile main event. I wonder if the author would agree with me.

The book is overplotted, and darker in tone than "Le Divorce". There are fewer people to like than in the earlier book, and the author seems exasperated with the selfish and manipulative aspects of upperclass French society -- understandably enough, given the way things actually are in that corner of the world, but the characters and situations sometimes shade into caricature. Nonetheless "Le Mariage" is both a good read and an interesting contemporary parable/morality play.

Rating:
Summary: Le Mariage is not what it's cracked up to be!
Review: With total gusto I read Le Divorce. Couldn't wait to start Le Mariage, but what a disappointment. I kept reading only because I didn't want to miss even one of the witty clever observations of Ms. Johnson on human nature, culture -- she's so good at that!!! -- but the plot and all the characters bored me silly. Less plot, less people, we don't need all that trampling.... just her sensibility is enough. I wondered if the author had cinematic ambitions in mind while writing this. Stick to subtle observations, Diane. There you're the best!!!