Almost French is the story written by Sarah Turnbull who is an Australian and writes about the life of Paris due to her unexpected to France. The story portrays the life of Sarah as she makes Paris her home with her husband Fredric who she met in Romania when she was traveling to various parts of Europe.Sarah was a strong willed Australian woman who took great care of her values and beliefs. When she accidentally met Fredric, a Frenchman, she went to Paris to pay him a visit and finally get married to him.
Before her visit to Paris, Sarah always thought that she knew Paris. Paris being beautiful city of beautiful people had much to offer to her as she thought. But her life changes in Paris and as does her ideas for the Paris.Paris was very unwelcoming for Sarah as she said in her book. She observed that the French people were making hard for her to getting used to this new environment.According to Sarah, even the small meetings with the French people made her think as a fool in a city.
Sarah was pretty sad with the behaviour she was getting there. Her husband was quite handsome and romantic and was very nice to her and played a major role in the inspiration for her to continue living in Paris.Sarah criticized French people as being rude all the way. According to her, they never wanted her to get acquainted with the culture and economical conditions of Paris. They were all too rude to her even at the places where she has to buy something from the market.
The response was never good. Even when she went out for drinking she was seen as a lonely person sitting in a corner and all the French people staring at her. This all made her so uncomfortable that she just moved away from these places.Sarah also criticizes the French ladies. French ladies are thought to be the fashion bearers of the world. According to Sarah, she didn’t find anything so beautiful in them She thought that these women are low in self confidence and they make all the changes in their getups just to please themselves as they are satisfied with what they are.
She also said that these women are surrounded by well of insecurities and they pretend such things that could make others think they are quite passionate and obsessive.In reality they all lacked this. She has also points against the beautifulness of Paris, as she observed that whole of Paris is rat infested and rundown. She was not the one who seemed to be impressed by Paris at all.Throughout the book, we can easily see the negativity in the writing style of Sarah. She was never happy in Paris and she never wanted to.
She always remembered the Sydney and quoted at many places how she missed Sydney and her parents and as well as her friends.Sarah in her book “Almost French” clearly gave an insight of Paris and the people of Paris. She concluded in the end that Paris is not like what we all think of it. It is same as any other city with all the negativity as any other city. Her experience with the French people hasn’t been successful and this was the reason why she wasn’t obsessed by being called as French.
