Author Description

Product Description A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier—a surprising turn of events for someone who didn’t have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn’t understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue? Does “I love you” even mean the same thing as “je t’aime”? When the couple, newly married, relocates to Francophone Geneva, Collins—fearful of one day becoming "a Borat of a mother" who doesn’t understand her own kids—decides to answer her questions for herself by learning French.When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages—and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidently telling her mother-in-law that she’s given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society—which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity’s many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning—and living in—French. Amazon.com Review Lauren Collins was an expat from North Carolina, living in London, when she met and fell in love with the man who would eventually become her husband. Olivier hailed from France (in case the name didn’t give that away), andWhen in French chronicles Collins’s fascinating and often hilarious journey learning his native tongue. Along the way she discovers that this endeavor isn’t a simple matter of translating “I love you” to “je t'aime,” for example, and adding an enthusiastic haw-haw! at the end. In America, the meaning of love is vast. We are just as likely to express our extreme ardor for our partners as we are a bag of Cheetos. For Olivier, this sort of impreciseness was infuriating, which pointed to an important cultural difference that required careful negotiation. To say thatWhen in French is mainly a meditation on language would be accurate (which I’m sure Olivier would appreciate). But that description makes it sound as boring as evidently Geneva is, and this memoir is anything but. You will laugh, you might even get misty-eyed, vous allez l'adorer.--Erin Kodicek, The Amazon Book Review Review “New Yorker staff writer Lauren Collins’s terrific memoir,When in French: Love in a Second Language, depicts bilingual romance with fresh asperity: “What was an ‘expat’ but an immigrant who drinks at lunch?”.” —Vogue.com “A thoughtful, beautifully written meditation on the art of language and intimacy. The book unfolds like several books in one: on moving abroad, on communication in human relationships, on the history of language, and in the end, on the delights of cross-cultural fusion.”—The New York Times Book Review “An ambitious and entertaining meditation on the ways in which love and language make us who we are…[Collins] weaves together personal, historical, and sociological anecdotes with ease, roving nimbly between awkward interfamilial interactions, neo-Whorfian theory, the comically tortured inner workings of the Académie française, and far beyond…Collins’ writing is endlessly, delightfully rich. She’s mastered love in her second language—and crafted a masterpiece in her first. Surely you’ll fall for this book too.”—Buzzfeed “[The book] takes off when Collins throws herself into language classes and funny Franglish conversations with