Mademoiselle Benoir
Christine Conrad, . . Houghton Mifflin, $20 (230pp) ISBN 978-0-618-57479-7
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
Reviewed on: 10/03/2005
Genre: Fiction