Foreign Tongue

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More About This Book

Overview

Paris, the storybook capital of romance—of strolls down cobblestone streets and kisses by the Seine—may not be the ideal location to mend a wounded heart. But pragmatic professional writer Anna, who has been unlucky in love in L.A., has come here with keys to her aunt's empty apartment. Bilingual and blessed with dual citizenship, she seeks solace in the delectable pastries, in the company of old friends, and in her exciting new job: translating a mysterious, erotic French novel by an anonymous author.

Intrigued by the story, and drawn in by the mystery behind the book, Anna soon finds herself among the city's literati—and in the arms of an alluring Parisian—as she resolves to explore who she is . . . in both cultures.

Editorial Reviews

Los Angeles Times
“‘Foreign Tongue,’ is a rare and canny creature: a brainy, sexy, romatic comedy of letters… If the moonlit Parisian finish to ‘Foreign Tongue’ is a little Hollywood, who says that’s a bad thing?”
Publishers Weekly

Few streets have been more hungrily plumbed for romance than those of Paris, and Marsot's debut is no exception. Fluent in English and French, Anna leaves Los Angeles for Paris after breaking up with her boyfriend. She devotes her time to translating an erotic French novel into English and, at times, Anna's voice mirrors the tedium she ascribes to the task. Her frequent expositions on the nature of translation become miniature lessons on idiom, nuance and linguistics, ironically delivered with greater passion than the erotic scenes themselves, which fall flat. Though the plot generates a series of questions-will Anna end up with actor Olivier? will she keep her job despite her disgruntled editor? whose work is she translating?-Marsot is more interested in Anna's inner tumult. Despite Anna and Olivier's somewhat textbook love affair, the increasingly complex relationship between Anna and elderly bachelor Bunny helps shore up the novel. The stunning descriptions of Parisian food and social life will certainly satisfy Francophiles. (Apr.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061673665
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 4/14/2009
  • Edition description: Original
  • Pages: 384
  • Sales rank: 848,714
  • Product dimensions: 5.31 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.86 (d)

Meet the Author

Vanina Marsot holds an MFA in literature and creative writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She divides her time between Paris and Los Angeles.

Read an Excerpt

Foreign Tongue

Chapter One

Il n'y a pas de malheur pire que celui qu'on a.
 —Arab Proverb

I could start like this, third-person omniscient: "She chucked it all and moved to Paris." I like "chucked it all," as if you could shove chunks of your life out the door of a moving vehicle, say a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro, newly restored on fat tires, vintage Beastie Boys playing in the background. Or how about "She picked up and left," with its faux-folksiness, a hair away from "she jes' plum picked up and left, Jed." As if one could pack one's possessions in a skirt and hoist it up, hoops and crinoline, and take off. Then there's that slightly perplexing "picked up." It reminds me of my childhood jackstraws game. All those plastic, bone-colored pieces. A hoe jimmied up by a rake or a sword or a trowel. The first few rounds are always carefree, reckless. It's only near the end when precision and silence rule the game. When everything hinges on the last move.

Or no dodge-and-weave, no embroidery, no third-person, no all-knowing voice: I left. It was easy for me to move to Paris, and I had to leave.

Like that. One day, my life became unbearable: straw, camel, back, and the unmistakable sound of splinters, or whatever a broken heart sounds like to the possessor (for the record: shattering glass, snapping tennis racket strings, the braying of world-weary donkeys, the high-pitched, internal bat-squeak of air being forced through congested sinuses, to name a few). I called my gabby travel agent. Many minutes and credit card numbers later, I had a ticket and a week to pack and get mylife in order.

It wasn't as wacky as it sounds. I had dual citizenship and some mad money stashed away; my copywriting gig for an entertainment PR firm was portable; and, in a neat trick, I sublet my apartment to my landlady's son. I let my parents know I needed a change of pace. I knew better than to tell them the real reason I was leaving town. If I told my mother, she'd worry the entire time I was gone, and I couldn't tell my father. He was so unnerved by any display of emotional distress that he invariably shut down, his eyes either glazing over or darting back and forth in search of the nearest possible exit. All of my friends figured a change would do me good. Except Lindsay.

"Anna, you're running away," she said, point-blank on the phone. As if the accusation, like a bullet, would stop me in my tracks. I could picture her in her stainless-steel kitchen, baby Ethan balanced on her hip, while she edited a movie trailer on three iMacs and puréed organic bok choy. Ever since she'd become a mother, she'd had no time for anyone's bullshit, least of all mine.

Figuring there was no point in arguing, I trilled, "Yes, I am," nearly like a country singer. I felt giddy. "And righteous about it," I added. I emptied a box of chewy caramel calcium supplements into a Ziploc bag and listened to her exhale long and impatiently. Surveying the somber piles of clothing around me, I thought of something Hank Williams Jr. had said about black being good for funerals and everything else.

"Remember when I was having a rough time? How I wanted to get in a boat and take off? But I knew that once I got in the boat and put out to sea, all my problems would crawl out of the woodwork, I knew they'd find a way onboard as stowaways." She was relentless, a Sherman tank of run-on sentences. My nose twitched. There was a prettier way of telling it, and she'd butchered the metaphor. "You have obligations, responsibilities," she added.

"Actually, I don't," I uttered, a tad bit waspishly. "I don't have any commitments, and being in this city has become unbearable. I can't stay here." The last sentence came out like a low howl, barely restrained from being frightening. I could have used the word "keening." It would have been right.

She was quiet. Remarshaling forces. "What, you think they don't have People magazine in Paris?" she countered.

"Don't."

"I bet they even have Entertainment Tonight. Dubbed, but still."

"Now you're being mean," I tried.

"Just move on! Deal with it!" she yelled. "You're not the first person in the world this has happened to!" Very, very gently, as if in slow motion, I put the phone back in its cradle and tiptoed away.

It was going to be a while before she forgave me; we weren't hang-up-acceptable sorts of friends. I was setting fire to lots of bridges. I mulled this over as I stuffed socks into shoes. It was probably simplistic, but I had a notion that the universe worked in a few key ways and I wasn't ready to give up on them. I believed most people were supposed to find each other and, if they were so inclined, have kids; that is, people who wanted to do that sort of thing. Not that it was supposed to be perfect. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes someone died, or they broke up, or random tragedy struck (though I could get paranoid about driving on the freeway, I tended to confine this line of thinking to natural disasters and times of war). I was a late bloomer, but I'd finally figured out that I wanted to be part of that world.

So, when I met and fell in love with Timothy, I thought I was following the master plan, the great scheme. ("Yay!" the lemmings cry as they rush the cliff en masse.) And I fell hard: I thought Timothy was The One. But the relationship conjugated itself differently: I met Timothy, I fell in love with Timothy, I had my heart broken by Timothy. Amo, amas, amok. It took less than six months.

Foreign Tongue. Copyright © by Vanina Marsot. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
( 4 )

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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Posted November 12, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    9781593083342 9780671024192 9781593081638

    Erotic Tongue

    I attended the UCLA bookfair this past April where she was a panelist. Based on her experiences in France and the description of the book, I decided to give it a shot. Is it great literature? No. Is it a bad book? No. It is one of those novels that does not pretend to be anything more that what it is: an entertaining slice of life. I must admit I wished more for the main character in the end; but, I did enjoy the intermingling of the novel she was translating and her life in Paris. I must also admit that the titilating bits of the translated did peak my interest occasionally. So, if you want a great read with a French backdrop, it won't be a waste of your time.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted August 23, 2009

    Just for Fun

    Another great book for a flight or beach. Fun to live life through the eyes of another.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted August 22, 2009

    Pretty obvious this was a first novel

    I found all the characters in the "real story" interesting. I wish Marsot could have used a plot device other than the long tedious passages of the novel the main character Anna was translating. These pages seemed like padding. Not having more than a menu reading and directions type skill in a few languages other than English, I was vaguely aware that there is a relationship between the national personality and the language of the nation, but the author described this relationship very effectively. So, in that she provoked me to think of this in a new way, the novel was successful.

    I thought the device of her collecting fortune telling cards and ultimately visiting a fortune teller were heavy handed. And, I did not like how she handled the character Bunny. Using the name Bunny for someone who ends up being first real and then imaginery was more than a bit obvious. She did nothing with the character at the beginning who took her to a sex club. Did she originally intend that that character and Bunny would be one and the same?

    I took some pleasure in reading fairly well written accounts of women's relationships and unique feminine pursuits like what to wear, buying sexy lingerie, pondering how much makeup to apply for a particular meeting. These things are usually only addressed in any detail in chiclit.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 14, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

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