In Hilary Reyl’s appealing debut novel, Lessons in French, ambitious young Kate travels all the way to Paris only to find herself in a classic coming-of-age quagmire—which is to say, she becomes a powerful woman’s personal assistant. Like so many 20-somethings, Kate is compulsively anxious to please, hungry for acceptance and all-too-skilled at blending in. The French culture doesn’t help, either. She admits at the story’s outset, "They say I have no accent and that this is a gift...but when you feel invisible, there is no end to the trouble you can get into." Upon arriving at the chic home of her new employer, an eminent if loopy photographer named Lydia Schell, Kate becomes embroiled in the family—as infatuated with Lydia’s daughter’s boyfriend as she is fascinated by the Schells’ friendships with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sally Mann, Umberto Eco and the other art-and-literature-world greats who make cameo appearances throughout. Indeed, Kate is soon everyone’s confidante, which makes her feel as if she is "living in a Picasso, where everyone talked to me about everyone else so that I saw their lives from all angles while they had no idea about mine." Though her struggle to find her own voice is compelling, it’s the portrait of Paris during the late 1980s that entrances, from the cafe and chestnut croissants to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mix in a handsome love interest or two, and you’ve got a novel you can finish in the length of a plane ride—a trip that you may just book by the end of page one.
— Amy Shearn
