If Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, French men must be from Jupiter. Upon first glance at Le Divorce, Diane Johnson’s recent book about American expatriates in Paris, I knew from the title that I was going to read an account of the evil of French men.

Sure enough, the young and pretty heroine, Isabel, lands at Charles de Gaulle Airport (from Santa Barbara, California) with the mission of caring for her pregnant stepsister, just dumped by her French husband. Charles-Henri, the handsome Frenchman who had seduced and married a vulnerable, naïve American girl, has left her for another woman…

When I met Diane Johnson, the charming five-foot-tall American writer, I was ready to hear horror stories about her encounters with Frenchmen. She assured me, however, that her daughter has been happily married to a Frenchman for the last 10 years and claimed neighbors and friends as the source of her inspiration!

Indeed, Le Divorce is much more than a bashing of French men. As Johnson put it, "it is a comedy of manners," simultaneously hilarious and realistic.

What makes her portrayal of American expatriates in Paris and a French bourgeois family so funny is her effective and musing use of stereotypes. "What makes the idea of Toussaint more charming than Halloween" she wonders. ‘What pleasures can you get from being able to distinguish Romanesque from Gothic and read Paris-Match? Why are the French obsessed with old furniture that looks ugly and pretentious?" Later, Isabel remembers that "it is their normal furniture since, after all, the Louis were their kings."

"I use stereotypes in order to show the good and bad of both cultures. I think I’m just as harsh with Americans. I didn’t intend to make one side look good, and the other side look bad," says Johnson.

Her heroine is a rebel. Isabel doesn’t want to succumb to "Frenchness". She refuses to wear a scarf (but doesn’t mind carrying the Kelly bag from Hermès bought by l’oncle Edgard, a handsome, intelligent, elderly politician). Her sister thinks French women wonderfully chic. In Isabel’s eyes, they all go around in drab beige raincoats (British, by the way), wearing identical plain scarves. She doesn’t apologize for speaking la langue de Molière improperly. "I know I am dumb about speaking French, but the French aren’t so great at English. For instance, all the proper French ladies at the gym do their aerobics to American music, but they don’t hear it. There’s a rap song that does ‘he’s a sexy motherfucker’, and this does not cause them to miss a beat." In fact, Isabel doesn’t mind not being French. "French women have the reputation of being intimidating," says Johnson, "but I don’t think they really are. Our magazines present them as sophistiquées, soignées, the epitome of chic."

However, there is something that Isabel loves about the French, whether she admits it or not, and that’s the charm of l’oncle Edgard, even though he is 70 and seems more interested in Bosnia and la foufoune. She says, "I felt that to be made love by a large, handsome, white-haired man with his large engine and whose speaking might as well have been in tongues — it was like being fucked by God."

Diane Johnson excels at portraying cultural differences when it comes to relationships or sex. When Isabel complains to her lover that he always talks about sex but never about money, he answers, "Of course, I am French. You Americans are always getting everything backwards." The novel doesn’t end in divorce but in murder —at EuroDisney. Moral? "I think there is quite a bit if similarity between French and Americans. Maybe because we both had a revolution," concludes Johnson.