Author:Diane Johnson
Set in Paris, LE DIVORCE is an alluring and elegant comedy of love and divorce 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 disintergrates 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. Comedy veers suddenly close to tragedy as passionate jealousy, self-interest and artistic intrigue interweave.
Great glittering floods of talent rage through this extraordinary novel
—— CosmopolitanA wildly funny, sad, laugh-out-loud, frightening, outrageous, thought-provoking, moving book
—— Houston ChronicleRaw, realistic, ribald and randy
—— Richard Gordon, author of Doctor in the HouseCatch-22 with stethoscopes
—— Cosmopolitan'The lucidity of Jill Paton Walsh's style and the dexerity of the narrative are such that her book reads more like a good thriller than a weighty novel of ideas...An ingenious fable'
—— The TimesLingering, sensuous and provocative, Christopher's unusual fantasy is a masterful exercise in the necromancy of poetry ripened into prose
—— Scotland on Sunday