>The French Lover

fiction

by admin | on August 23rd, 2010 | 2 comments

I picked up this book in the library the minute I saw it which I normally don’t do much but it had Taslima Nasreen as a writer and her Lajja is my all time favorite book, what a book that was… outstanding.

The French lover is primarily a story of “Nina” a bengali woman who married a Punjabi guy to get away from her country, to get away from a lot of memories she can’t deal with and hoping that life will become beautiful with that.

However reality is totally different and instead of enjoying Paris she is confined to her house and treated almost as a maid and an object to satisfy the physical needs of the man

Eventually she cuts herself away from the man she calls husband and starts to explore Paris and herself in her own terms.

It’s a story of a woman who deals with her own confused self, her sexuality, her need for someone in forgein land. The story has amazing potential and inspite of having a great plot somehow this book didn’t work for me.

I still can’t put a finger of what exactly I didn’t like in the book, may be it was the fact Nina was really too confused and uncertain, a character I certainly couldn’t relate too. Also the fact the she was out to discover her sexuality makes it acceptable to have certain steamy scenes in the book but somehow I thought it was a tad over done at places… At times almost felt like a raunchy soft porn book

Or may be it was the fact the characters in the book were really stereo typed… not even one man is good, all of them portrayed skin seeking hungry wolves and the women as alba naaris who just have to go thru the torture in a man dominated world…

All in all a book which had awesome potential but failed to cash on it…

Rating 2.5/5

Book The French Lover

Authors Taslima Nasrin

PS: Cross posted from here

admin (476 Posts)

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Comments (2)

তমসো দীপ Tuesday - 24 / 08 / 2010 Reply

>First of all, the book is badly translated. And then, the main character's name is Nila, not Nina. And also, it tells the truth of the life. The book is based on some real life experience of the author. So you can not deny it. And also, this book was praised in her own country Bangladesh. A paper said - Taslima seems to be growing up as a writer. No doubt soon she will be able to reach the quality of Nobel authors. Anyway, if you could read it in Bengali, you could see how wonderful it is. Still, thanks for the review. :)
Monika Friday - 27 / 08 / 2010 Reply

>yeah may be u are right, I do believe that translations loose a lot from the book sometimes and then each person enjoys different kinds of books

PS: sorry for the mistake in the name, apologies for that its mistake that happened in typing