Diane Johnson
L'Affaire
New York: Dutton, 2003. Pp. 340. CAN $37.50

Reviewed by Nora Foster Stovel

If you have not yet read the first two novels in Diane Johnson's Anglo-French trilogy, Le Divorce (1997) and Le Mariage (2000), do so at your earliest opportunity. But you need not read them before you read her latest offering, L'Affaire. These three novels suggest a Henry James tale penned by a contemporary American Jane Austen. Diane Johnson is well placed to write novels about American women infiltrating society in France, for she divides her time between San Francisco and Paris. Quel dommage! The two epigrams of the novel reflect the Franco-American mutual anomosity: "It is because America has consented neither to sin nor to suffering that she has no soul," by Andre Gide, and "the destiny of France is to irritate the world," by Jean Giradoux.

L'Affaire features Amy Hawkins, a pretty young Californian from Palo Alto, who has not inherited money, like a James heroine, but who has earned it through a lucrative buy-out of a dotcom company that she helped to design. Like Isabel Archer, Amy goes to Europe to educate and cultivate herself. France provides the finishing school for this ingenue-from ski slopes to city streets, from chalets to chateaux.

L'Affaire is an enigmatic title. Certainly, there are affairs aplenty, in the sense of romantic flings, with Austrian barons and Armenian seducers. But Johnson employs the term in its French sense of a matter or business. The business that opens the novel is an avalanche in the tiny skiing village of Valmeri, where a married couple, Adrian Venn and his young American wife Kerry, are buried, leaving their baby, Henry, to be tended by a teenager. Adrian Venn, as it turns out, has more than one family, not to mention a French chateau complete with vineyard and publishing company. The plot thickens when Amy becomes involved with the Venn family financially as well as emotionally, taking an interest in the chateau and its publishing affair, Icarus, not to mention a love affair with a Venn in-law.

L'Affaire is divided into four parts. The first is titled "Hotel" with the epigraph "Les affaires? C'est bien simple. C'est l'argent des autres," by Alexandre Dumas Fils. Part II is entitled "Hospital" with the epigraph "L'hypocrisie est un homage que le vice rend à la vertu," by La Rochefoucauld (Maximes). Part III, entitled "Snow," features two epigraphs: "Etre ou ne pas être. Telle est la question," from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and "Je suis ici envoyée de par Dieu … pour vous bouter hors de toute la France," from Jeanne d'Arc's letter to the Duke of Bedford. Part IV is titled "Paris" and also features two epigraphs: "When it comes to happiness, it has only one use, to make happiness possible," by Albert Camus, and "Personal salvation is granted to those who seek the salvation of all," by Nikolai Berdaevev. The section titles hint at the scope of the narrative, and the epigraphs reflect its ascerbic and sometimes sardonic tone.

The last epigraph reflects Amy Hawkin's infatuation with the theories of Mutual Aid advocated by Prince Peter Kropotkin, a theory that she wishes to emulate in her own life. Hence her unfortunate involvement in affairs, of both kinds, that are none of her business, but that make for highly enjoyable reading. Saint Joan, that most xenophobic of saints, is invoked by the French to protect the purity of France from such insurgent Americans.

Forty-one intriguing chapters and 340 delightful pages await the reader of L'Affaire. Enjoy your fling with the latest entertainment from Diane Johnson's Anglo-French trilogy.