The French Lover's Wife

A Novel

Janet Garber

• Publisher: SparkPress
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781684631827
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction

When Lucie, a smart and sassy girl from NYC, meets Pierre, a dashing Frenchman, at a grad school party in 1973, she abandons her PhD program to run off with him. It’s the start of the sexual revolution, and she doesn’t intend to miss a thing. They first land in Mexico, then marry and settle in Paris to live the dream. But not long into their marriage, Pierre becomes an intolerant critic of her wifely imperfections; Lucie just can’t seem to measure up to French standards.
Instead of settling into her new life, she balks at French customs. As planned, she has their baby son in 1976, but far from succeeding in settling her down, the baby highlights her inability to depend on Pierre and precipitates a meltdown. Finally, she makes two friends, young mothers she’s met at the playground. When one of them tries to commit suicide, Lucie panics and considers returning to the U.S. but fears the impact on her young son. An English-speaking women’s writing group sets her on the right path. Ultimately, those women help her realize what she truly needs and wants out of life: to be a mother, a career woman, and a writer.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Prologue: Inside the Walls of La Roquette, 1974
• Grad School Intersession, February 1, 1973
• The Courtship
• Dizzy in Love
• The City of Lights
• Inside the Walls of La Roquette, 1974
• Madame Karol
• Fitting In
• Exiled in Paris
• Unhappy Faces
• Mme Karol Visits
• Alfortville
• Honfleur
• Greek Night
• Métro-Boulot-Dodo
• Bastille Day, July 14, 1975
• Le Réveillon, December 31, 1975
• My Goal for the Year, 1976
• June 1, 1976
• June 16, 1976
• Milou O’Clock
• I’m a Person Too!
• Some Things Resist Being Ground
• Cuisine Franco-Américaine
• Promenading Through Paris
• Bulletin
• Who Was More Fragile?
• Explorations
• Go Round the Playground
• Stalked
• Catch More Flies, How?
• Mamie’s Visit
• Not My Type?
• Discord
• Sex, Anyone?
• Remedial Sex
• Party Time
• Fresh Air vs. Clean Apartment
• The Significance of a Smirk
• Camille, Jacky, Baby Chloé
• Escape to New York
• Back Home
• New Job, New Life
• The Bomb
• But I Love Paris (in a Way)
• What’s a Lesbian Anyway?
• Feminist Writer’s Unite!
• Fifteen Turns into Five
• Gogo Gigot
• My Writers
• Fertile Fanny
• Trip #2 to NYC
• Winter Yields to Spring, 1977
• The Reckoning
• Should I Stay or Should I Go?
• Friends
• Rodin Museum
• Writing Prompt
• What Does My Future Hold?
• Julien
• Infatuation
• Go Along to Get Along?
• Weekend in the Vosges
• The Slenderest of Threads
• Trysting
• Is There Even a Job for Me in Hawaii?
• A Price Too High
• Confidences
• Flap
• Company Wife
• The Home Fires
• Desperate to Be Published
• Confronting the Man
• The Center Does Not Hold
• Julien?
• Who Am I Really?
• Try, Try Again
• I’m a Writer!
• Dining with the Lafontaines
• Floralies
• Truth
• The Brake
• Coming Clean
• The Brake
• Who’ll Be Crying Last?
• D-Day
• Letter from Hawaii
• Saving Mme Karol
• Camille Resurfaces
• Crisis Mode
• The Last Week
• Au Revoir
• Heading for Home
• Epilogue: Two Months Later
• Epilogue: Ten Years Later
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Book Club Discussion Questions
• Selected Titles from Sparkpress