Mademoiselle Benoir

Conrad's pleasant first novel follows Tim Reinhart, a 30-something American mathematics professor, as he transforms a run-down farmhouse in the south of France into habitable living quarters and an artist's studio, struggling with the vagaries of French culture, romance and inheritance laws along the way. The story unfolds entirely through letters and diary entries—an artifice that loses steam halfway through the story—and though the author captures the charms and frustrations an outsider encounters in France, she doesn't achieve a credible male voice or the quirky appeal of A Year in Provence. Tim's on-again-off-again relationship with a neighbor, Marcelline Becaze, a lawyer in a nearby village, provides some spice, but the culture clash really heats up when his friendship with Catherine Benoir, a French woman nearly 30 years his senior, deepens into romance. Catherine's older sister, Pauline, is horrified at this slap in the face to French tradition. Her extreme and often amusing attempts to quash the relationship provide an intriguing look into French mores and traditions. Though she turns most of her family against Tim and Catherine and tries to use her family's clout with the Catholic Church to impede their nuptials, love, as always, prevails. (Jan. 4)