A Novel with Thoughts and Ponderings

L'AFFAIRE

Author: Diane Johnson ISBN: 0452285631 9/2004 CONTEMPORARY Publisher: Penquin Putnam

L'Affaire by Diane Johnson

When Amy Hawkins, a young dot-com executive from California who has made her fortune at the top of NASDAQ, overhears a pair of elderly and thus much wiser socialites decry the new generation for their incompetence in all things worldly, she sets off for Europe to find culture, her roots, and maybe a cause to devote her considerable fortune to. Amy starts her quest at one of the finest small hotels in the French Alps-a hotel noted for skiing and its famous cooking lessons-in the town of Valmeri.

A few days into her trip, Amy is nearly swept away by an avalanche (started, some say, by low-American warplanes). Two of the hotel's guests, esteemed English publisher Adrian Venn and his much younger American wife, Kerry, were not as fortunate as Amy.  Both lie comatose in a nearby hospital.  Learning that French and English law dictate a very different division of money depending on where Adrian dies, Adrian's children-young, old, legitimate, and illegitimate-assemble in Valmeri to protect their interests should he not pull through.

Amy, already suspect as an American, finds that her nationality freezes the social climate as she steps in to assist the family.  In her innocence, Amy sets in motion a series of events in France and England that spotlight ancient national differences, customs, and laws.  Add one or two small affairs that may topple carefully balanced alliances, and soon it is as the French say, a situation.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS: Top Pick Rose

Amy Hawkins isn't doing too shabby. She was in the right place at the right time, almost accidentally getting in on the dot.com explosion, when there was lots of money to be made in the new world of the internet. Now she has sold her share and become a multi-billionaire as a result.

Amy is 'new money' with great plans as to how she will use that money. She's going to run a foundation whose basis is 'mutual aid'. Loosely interpreted, the theory of Mutual Aid is: if you can help—do so. Before she does, Amy feels a few months in Europe (Paris, especially) is in order to add a bit of polish and perfect what she feels is her imperfect life and personality.

While skiing in the Alps, Amy is able to put to practice her belief of Mutual Aid when a married couple is nearly killed and are now comatose after an avalanche, leaving their infant child and the wife's teenage brother left to fend for themselves.

In the meantime, the husband's children from previous relationships come out of the woodwork to wait for his passing. Never would Amy have guessed how her life was about to change once again—in a very personal way.

L'AFFAIRE was a big change from the usual romance books I've read, but no less enjoyable. While Amy is the main character of the story, there are several others as essential and intriguing; each with their own agenda and side of the story to tell. Diane Johnson does a fabulous job at putting you in each of their shoes—I found it very easy to get wrapped up in the characters, their feelings, and understanding their point of view; all very honest and sometimes not pretty as they looked within themselves and their life.

It may sound like this would be a tedious book to read, so much introspection and struggle, but the author is able to blend this all with everyday life situations and quite a bit of dry humor that balances out the story very nicely.

The only problem I had with this book was the ending. I couldn't decide if it was a happy ending or not. If anything, I would have liked a look at the characters ten years down the road in an epilogue. Perhaps, however, it was the author's intention that it is left to the reader to envision what happens next.

Sue Cloud

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