Almost French: Navigating a new life in Paris

On the surface, Sarah Turnbull's adventures in Almost French make for an entertaining read. The book recounts Sarah's experiences as Australian journalist in France with her eventual husband Frederic, a lawyer she met in Bucharest only briefly before joining him in Paris. Sarah faces plenty of challenges in her bid to orient herself in a new place and continue her career as a freelance journalist.

Almost French | Published January 2003 | Read August 2023

Sarah's cultural missteps and antipodean navigation of her new world reveal a ton of interesting stuff about French and Parisian culture. I liked Sarah's honest appraisal of the cultural differences between France and Australia, and I admired her perseverance and resilience as she embraces her new life. That said, I did wonder about her perspectives on the French and French culture. They do seem somewhat stereotypical and very few of the people Sarah came into contact with sounded like people you'd want to be around. Surely not everyone is super chic? I've been to Paris three times and I saw plenty of 'ordinary people' going about their business.

The book is Sarah's memoir so of course it is told from her point of view. Despite her relationship with eventual husband Frederic forming the core of her book, he was strangely quite 'absent' from the text. It feels like the 'love' part of the 'love and new life' is underdone. I am in no way a romance reader, but it would be have interesting to learn more about how Sarah and Frederic navigated their different cultural backgrounds in more depth as their relationship developed. There are several insightful and sometimes amusing anecdotes about their cultural misunderstandings, but these could have been fleshed out more.

It is worth noting that the book was published in 2003, and I read it some twenty years later. It covers the time Sarah spent in France in the 1990s. She and Frederic now have a son and have moved to Sydney. I think the cultural differences Sarah faced are probably less pronounced now, but that might just be my perspective.

I have dreamt of living in Europe for many years. Reading Sarah's book lessened my desire to so as it all sounded too hard and a bit awful, if I am being honest. I also came away from the book without a clear sense of the conclusions Sarah came to after some years in France. I don't have a strong sense of what the book is trying to say about settling into a new world, assimilating while keeping hold of yourself and your own culture. Sarah's series of anecdotes are interesting but what is her ultimate take on how to navigate cultural differences? I'm not sure that was clearly communicated in the book.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐