Diane Johnson is an American novelist and essayist whose satirical novels often feature American heroines living abroad in contemporary France. Her work is characterized by keen observations of cultural clashes and adaptation. Johnson explores the ironies and complexities of life away from home, often with a light touch and sharp wit. Her writing invites readers to contemplate identity and belonging in a globalized world.
The plot revolves around the enchanting city of Picturia, which faces a dire threat from Ig, who unleashes The HAZE, a force that spreads apathy and indifference among its citizens. As the vibrant spirit of the city begins to fade, Ig's sinister plan aims to destroy Picturia while its inhabitants remain oblivious to the looming danger. The story explores themes of awareness, community, and the battle against complacency in the face of adversity.
Fourteen short stories about Paris by Evan S. Connell, Alice Adams, Hortense Calisher, Mark Helprin, James Laughlin, Robert McAlmon, Ellen Gilchrist, Paul Theroux, Peter Taylor.
This "brilliant, engaging, cleverly manipulated piece of fiction" ("San Francisco Chronicle"), written by the author of "Le Divorce", captures the moral dilemmas and life-and-death decisions that are the foundation of hospital life, portraying the continuous clashes of motive and sensibility that create the ongoing comedy of medical manners.
A certain smile: "A young woman bored with her lover, begins an affair with an older man that unfolds in unexpected and troubling ways."--Publisher description.
A wickedly funny and observant novel about the delicate questions of love, death and money. Amy Hawkins, Californian millionairess, is travelling in Europe, to find her culture, her roots and a cause to which she might devote her considerable fortune. She lands at one of the finest small hotels in the French Alps � a hotel noted for skiing and its famous cooking lessons � and soon finds that Americans are not the flavour of the month in France. A few days into her trip, she narrowly survives an avalanche. Two of the hotel�s other guests, English publisher Adrian Venn and his much younger wife Kerry, are not as fortunate and both lie comatose in a nearby hospital. Amy steps in as Adrian�s children � young and old, legitimate and illegitimate - assemble in Valmeri to protect their interests should he not pull through, and in her innocence sets in motion a series of events in France and England that threaten to topple carefully built family alliances once and for all. Add one or two small affaires and soon it is, as the French would say, a situation.
Clara Holly is a former actress, beautiful, rich, and 'well married, far from her Oregon beginnings' to the renowned but reclusive film director Serge Clay. Anne-Sophie is a proper young Frenchwoman with a smart little antique stall in the Paris flea market and a wedding to plan. As the plot thickens they are all drawn into a cross between a modern Feydeau farce and a Kafkaesque nightmare, as their paths and those of a host of other characters intersect at the Cray's château. Despite murder, misunderstanding, hostage-taking and erotic encounters, however, le marriage must go ahead in the grand French style.
Isabel Walker, a young, not-so-innocent, American abroad, arrives in Paris to find that her sister's French husband ('the frog prince') has just walked out. While Isabel embarks on her own sentimental education -seduced by gourmet food, antiques, existentialism and an older man -her sister's marriage disintegrates into bitter Franco-American wrangles over money, titles and a mysterious painting. With a sharp tongue and an ironic eye for the foibles of the Parisian bourgeoisie, the French art world and American ex-patriots, Isabel is a collector of experience, even those she can't control.
The two-time Pulitzer Prize- and three-time National Book Award-nominated author of the bestseller "Le Divorce" returns with a mesmerizing novel of double standards and double agents.
Contains interviews by critics and scholars with some of the foremost women writers, including Maya Angelou, A S Byatt, Luce Irigaray, Erica Jong, Jeanne Moreau, and Grace Paley.
