Book Review: How the French Invented Love

How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance by Marilyn Yalom

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I was expecting a rather more scholarly treatise here, but this book is not really that. It never really enters into the conversation posed by the title--instead, Yalom looks at French literature through the centuries, summarizing the books she's chosen, talking a bit about the authors and their lives. While there is some talk of how these books reflected French culture, she doesn't really draw conclusions, nor does she talk much about how they influenced the culture, or if they did (with a few exceptions), or what made the French what they are when it comes to love, women and sex. She does make some very interesting points about French attitudes toward love and sex as compared to American attitudes, but she never explains why the French are that way. Having said that, Yalom raises some interesting questions (though I'm not sure she does so deliberately), and opens some doors in terms of providing insight into another culture. It's an easy book to read, very conversational, with many personal anecdotes, and so it should appeal to a non-scholarly audience. I wanted a bit more, but I enjoyed what was there.



View all my reviews