Recenze When in French

New Yorker staff writer Lauren Collins's terrific memoir, When in French: Love in a Second Language, depicts bilingual romance with fresh asperity: What was an 'expat' but an immigrant who drinks at lunch?. -Vogue.com A thoughtful, beautifully written meditation on the art of language and intimacy. The book unfolds like several books in one: on moving abroad, on communication in human relationships, on the history of language, and in the end, on the delights of cross-cultural fusion.-The New York Times Book Review An ambitious and entertaining meditation on the ways in which love and language make us who we are...[Collins] weaves together personal, historical, and sociological anecdotes with ease, roving nimbly between awkward interfamilial interactions, neo-Whorfian theory, the comically tortured inner workings of the Académie française, and far beyond...Collins' writing is endlessly, delightfully rich. She's mastered love in her second language-and crafted a masterpiece in her first. Surely you'll fall for this book too.-Buzzfeed [The book] takes off when Collins throws herself into language classes and funny Franglish conversations with her in-laws. She takes an amusing side trip to L'Academie Française, France's language police, to watch a committee try to come up with a substitute for the invasive English expression 'business as usual.' Gradually, fitfully, it all comes together.-Minneapolis Star Tribune [An] engaging and surprisingly meaty memoir...When in French ranges from the humorously personal to a deeper look at various theories of language acquisition and linguistics...There's far more to Collins' book than screwball comedy, and those who have weathered linguistic crossings themselves are apt to find particular resonance in its substantive inquiry into language, identity, and transcultural translation.-NPR.org Collins offers up her own love affair as a case study, applying the tools of the social sciences to her life, and offering, along the way, a primer on linguistics and semantics and a cultural history of language. But if that makes When in French sound boring or academic, I've given you the wrong impression: Collins's memoir is anything but dull. She's analytical, but never clinical, with a reporter's keen ear for nuance, and her curiosity about words-the meaning beneath their meaning-is infectious.-Vogue Collins' memoir, frequently funny, overflows with ideas about culture and communication.-Newsday This gorgeous, finely woven memoir explores the gaps between words and worlds.-Refinery29 We can't all fall in love with a dashing Frenchman and move to France, but that's what Lauren Collins found herself doing when she met Olivier. This delightful memoir explores the New Yorker staff writer's experience learning the French language-and the culture and people besides.-Elle.com In her emotional, erudite memoir...[Collins] documents her linguistic labors, including the missteps-she accidentally tells her mother-in-law she gave birth to a coffeemaker-on the road to mastery. At times she expounds on the history and philosophy of language; at others, it feels like catching up with a clever friend you haven't seen since college. But the most intriguing question posed is as much about identity as language: Are you someone else when you speak and live in a non-native tongue?-TIME A collection of musings on translation, linguistics, and cultural identity, all underpinned by a satisfying love story...Collins's is the best kind of memoir: the kind that uses the author's own experience as an entryway to-and a bridge between-a number of universal topics.-Brooklyn Rail Part memoir, part cultural exploration, this heartwarming read will appeal to romantics and lovers of language alike.-RealSimple.com Woven into Collins's poignant-and often laugh-out-loud funny-personal story of trial and erreur is a primer on pop linguistics, with meditations on whether the lang schovat popis