cover image What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

Debra Ollivier. Putnam Adult, $24.95 (244pp) ISBN 978-0-399-15562-8

American-born Francophile Ollivier follows up Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl with a volume largely concerned with uncovering the behavior and lifestyle of the secretive French woman. For instance, Ollivier pointedly debunks the myth that French women deprive themselves of fattening foods and drink in order to maintain a suitable weight, but reveals that French women are masters of portion control. She also recounts instances with her French counterparts-she lived there for 10 years, has a French husband, and divides her time between L.A. and Paris-in which she came to the realization that, in France, women genuinely love men, and vice versa; both strive for more compatibility between the sexes, radically diminishing the ""battle of the sexes"" mentality so commonplace in American society. Intriguingly, Ollivier contrasts the French desire for mystery against the American need for knowledge and control, finding in the discrepancy a possible reason for the ever-escalating American divorce rate. Ollivier is sure to dazzle any reader with a fondness for French women with this batch of anecdotes and corresponding hypotheses, drizzled with a winning combination of sarcasm and wit.