How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance

“Absolutely marvelous…lively and learned….Marilyn Yalom’s book is a distinguished contribution to our experience of a great literature, as well as an endearing memoir.” —Diane Johnson, author of Lulu in Marrakech and Le Divorce

“[An] enchanting tour of French literature—from Abelard and Heloise in the 12th century to Marguerite Duras in the 20th and Philippe Sollers in the 21st.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

How the French Invented Love is an entertaining and masterful history of love à la française by acclaimed scholar Marilyn Yalom. Spanning the Middle Ages to the present, Yalom explores a love-obsessed culture through its great works of literature—from Moliere’s comic love to the tragic love of Racine, from the existential love of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre to the romanticism of George Sand and Alfred de Musset. A thoroughly engaging homage to French culture and literature interlaced with the author’s delicious personal anecdotes, How the French Invented Love is ideal for fans of Alain de Botton, Adam Gopnik, and Simon Schama.

Oh, how the French love love! For hundreds of years, they have championed themselves as guides to the art de l'amour through their literature, paintings, songs, and cinema. A French man or woman without amorous desire is considered defective, like someone missing the sense of smell or taste. Now revered scholar Marilyn Yalom intimately examines the tenets of this culture's enduring gospel of romance.

Basing her delightfully erudite findings on her extensive readings of French literature, as well as memories of her personal experiences in la belle France, Yalom explores the many nuances of love as it has evolved over the centuries, from the Middle Ages to the present. Following along, step-by-step, on her romance-tinged literary detective hunt, the reader discovers how the French invented love, how they have kept it vibrant for more than nine centuries, what is unique in the French love experience, and what is universal.

“How the French Invented Love is absolutely marvelous, so lively and learned. It explains things about French books I have read but not really understood--La Princesse de Clèves, for example--and introduces books that sound fascinating, which I will read. Marilyn Yalom’s book is a distinguished contribution to our experience of a great literature, as well as an endearing memoir.” - Diane Johnson, author of Lulu in Marrakech and Le Divorce

“How the French Invented Love is absolutely marvelous, so lively and learned....Marilyn Yalom’s book is a distinguished contribution to our experience of a great literature, as well as an endearing memoir.” - Diane Johnson, author of Lulu in Marrakech and Le Divorce

“Seductive and fascinating. Marilyn Yalom is the perfect companion for this delightfully candid tour de l’amour.” - Diane Ackerman, author of One Hundred Names for Love

“Against the backdrop of the American fifties, Marilyn Yalom reclaims her enchantment with love stories from France. She explores the mysteries and complexities of love as they have been bequeathed by the French from centuries of their literature. In the process, she has updated Denis de Rougemont’s famous essay, running this time the gamut of love’s many facets, guises, and sexes. She goes beyond the recognizable clichés to offer a comprehensive study, a rich psychological and cultural survey. In the end, she teaches us not necessarily to love the French but how to (or not) love with them.” - Pierre Saint-Amand, Brown University; author of The Pursuit of Laziness: An Idle Interpretation of the Enlightenment

“Marilyn Yalom is a charming guide on an exploration of desire, romance, sex and passion à la française. Like a detective on a steamy case, Yalom digs through literature and life, uncovering the mysteries of l’amour. How the French Invented Love will surely seduce you.” - Ellen Sussman, author of French Lessons

“The author employs an enjoyably downright style, blending in her own experiences in France over the course of 60 years as well as the personal stories of French friends. . . . Her first-person confidences give this an engagingly informal tone.” - Kirkus Reviews

“[An] amiable tour through changing French attitudes toward love during the past millennium....Engaging.” - New Yorker

“By the end of this book, it is hard not to feel both breathless and dowdy. Am I living sufficiently by my passions? Shouldn’t my husband be making more declarations? Perhaps the French are on to something.” - Pamela Druckerman, Wall Street Journal

“Marilyn Yalom’s new study, How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance, reaches beyond the stereotypes by focusing on literature, making an erudite, elegant, and charming case for France’s love ‘invention.’” - Los Angeles Review of Books

“As in her previous books, in How the French Invented Love Marilyn Yalom combines a witty and conversational style with impressive erudition. From Héloise and Abélard through the happy and unhappy lovers of Rousseau, Stendhal, Balzac, Duras, as well as true-life lovers like Sartre and Beauvoir, this engaging book takes the reader on a full-scale tour of “l’amour à la française,” including its most recent versions. Yalom is no misty-eyed idealist when it comes to love, or to the French, but her personal involvement in the story is part of the charm of this highyl readable book.” - Susan Rubin Suleiman, Harvard University; author of Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature

“Marilyn Yalom combines a witty and conversational style with impressive erudition….[She] is no misty-eyed idealist when it comes to love, or to the French, but her personal involvement in the story is part of the charm of this highly readable book.” - Susan Rubin Suleiman, Harvard University; author of Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature

“Marilyn Yalom reclaims her enchantment with love stories from France. She explores the mysteries and complexities of love as they have been bequeathed by the French from centuries of their literature....She goes beyond the recognizable clichés to offer a comprehensive study, a rich psychological and cultural survey.” - Pierre Saint-Amand, Brown University; author of The Pursuit of Laziness: An Idle Interpretation of the Enlightenment

“In this enchanting tour of French literature—from Abélard and Héloïse in the 12th century to Marguerite Duras in the 20th and Philippe Sollers in the 21st—Yalom attempts to unravel the mystery of how the French manage their romances, marriages, affairs, and obsession with love and sex. Former professor of French, current senior scholar at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, avowed feminist, confessed Proustian, admitted Simone de Beauvoir groupie, the erudite and charming Yalom is the perfect companion. Yalom (A History of the Wife) argues that it’s not only gender-specific traits and roles that are socially constructed, but love, too. For example, Les liaisons dangereuses (the most wickedly erotic book ever written, in Yalom’s opinion) is still on the list of required reading in French high schools. Her passion for French literature is palpable, and the analytical connections that she draws to the love lives of its writers (gay, straight, or just plain neurotic) are edifying and great fun to read. At the heart of this delicious book is Yalom the reader, whose fascination with the French way of love and pleasure in sharing her enthusiasms is highly contagious. Readers will want to run to the library and stay there for a year, reading everything she deconstructs.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Enchanting….At the heart of this delicious book is Yalom the reader, whose fascination with the French way of love and pleasure in sharing her enthusiasms is highly contagious. Readers will want to run to the library and stay there for a year, reading everything she deconstructs.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This superbly realized and wonderfully engaging work of analytical cultural history creates a class by itself.” - Booklist