French Seduction: An American's Encounter with France, Her Father, and the Holocaust

by Eunice Lipton

In this passionate blend of autobiography and cultural history, love and sex and art collide with hatred, withering French xenophobia, and death. How does Paris, with all its faults, remain not only the world's most visited tourist destination, but also the locus of endless sexual fantasy and the very image of the good life for Americans, and for writer and art historian Eunice Lipton? In sensual and intellectually thrilling prose, Lipton explores how her Eastern European father lured her to France across his fantasies, and then how she surrendered to the food, the textures and smells, the art, and the astonishingly maternal French state. But she is also forced to confront the anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus Affair that lay beneath the dazzling light of Impressionism; the racial disdain of France's Roaring Twenties; and the unspeakable poverty of peasant life that paid for the luxury of eighteenth-century Versailles. And how can a Jewish woman forgive France for its betrayal of its Jews to the Nazis? Lipton, one of our most respected cultural historians, deftly dissects her love-hate relationship with France, transporting the Francophile in all of us back to that first love, and then way beyond to something startlingly new.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Jeanette Michalets · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
Not my favorite book by Lisa Unger. It was too over the top for me. I felt the investigation part near the end wasn't strong. Just way too much of "seeing dead people."
I agree with another reader who felt the women in the book were too tolerant of their philandering husband and boyfriend and the "hill people" were caricatures, stereotypes.

[Foxtrot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Lipton, who divides her time between the US and France, has written a memoir that draws interesting parallels between American Jewish life and France's history and culture, especially in regards to immigrants and/or those perceived as "others". A Francophone for several decades, I was aware of France's historical path, but through this book I learned many more intimate particulars about France's history and cultural icons. This book has tarnished my ardor for La France, and I fear I may now not be able to as readily forgive them their history as easily as the author has done.

[Alisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started out to be a very engrossing memoir, but now I am losing momentum because it has morphed into an art history book. It is still interesting, just not what I was looking for. Also, you'd need a significant art history background to understand all the references. The author is obviously extremely intelligent and insightful, I am just hoping the book morphs back a memoir soon so the story can resurface

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful. Disappointing. Choppy, disjointed, self-absorbed, meandering, lacking insight, has nothing to say but apparently needed to publish a book.