2022: half memoir, half history lesson, didn't add up to a full thumbs up for me.

So this book oscillates between a memoir of Collins learning French, and history of language, particularly French and even more specifically learning French as a second language. Some of the finer points on the topic of French were vaguely interesting? But the memoir sections were WAY more engaging, and I wish there had been more anecdotal stories about her new family to ground the book.

This book hit home for me right now, as one of the most standout thoughts about her life in Geneva was, "it seemed sad, though, that the main selling point of the place where we lived was its proximity to places where we’d rather live” which is exactly how I feel about Monterey.

There are a lot of big feelings in this book, which make for some grand sentences like, "no king aspires to be the one who lets his civilization die in a foreign land, just as no parent dreams that his child will grow up to marry someone who doesn’t speak their language.” Okay!

The blurb on the back cover of this book also said that it was funny. It's definitely not funny! And I also don't think I liked Olivier? I thought he was kind of a jerk sometimes, and I have a number of friends who are French, so I don't think it was just the language barrier. I guess I'll say that Collins really didn't seem to enjoy her life in Geneva, and she certainly didn't come across like Olivier was worth living in a country she didn't like.