Lauren Collins ’02 Learns About French — and Love

By Megan Laubach ’18

Published Sept. 16, 2016

1 min read

The book: Lauren Collins ’02 discovered that a language barrier is no match for love when she moved to London and fell in love with a Frenchman named Olivier. But she wondered what it means to love someone in a second language as her relationship with Olivier continued to grow — in English. Did “I love you” even mean the same thing as “je t’aime”?

The newly married couple relocated to Geneva, and Collins didn’t want to be “a Borat of a mother” who couldn’t even understand her own kids, so she decided to learn French at a Swiss language school.

This is where her memoir, When in French: Love in a Second Language begins. What ensues is a funny and surprising story about the lengths we go to for love and a chronicle of Collins’ exploration across history and culture as she learns French. Collins endures excruciating role-playing games with her classmates and accidentally tells her mother-in-law that she has given birth to a coffee machine, but eventually describes the joys of finally learning — and living — in French.

The author: Collins was an English major as an undergraduate, and is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she has covered everything from Michelle Obama to graffiti artist Banksy. This is her first book.

Image

Opening lines: “I hadn’t wanted to live in Geneva. In fact, I had decisively wished not to, but there I was. Plastic ficuses flanked the entryway of the building. The corrugated brown carpet matched the matte brown framework of the elevator cage. The ground floor housed the offices of a psychiatrist and those of an iridologue—a practitioner of a branch of alternative medicine that popularized when, in 1861, a Hungarian physician noticed similar streaks of color in the eyeballs of a broken-legged man and a broken-legged owl. Our apartment was one story up.”

Reviews: Kirkus Reviews calls it “cleverly organized, well-written … As the memoir unfolds, Collins does not spare herself, sharing her apprehension and her missteps with candor and frequently with humor … Filled with pleasing passages in every chapter.”

0 Responses

Join the conversation

Plain text

Full name and Princeton affiliation (if applicable) are required for all published comments. For more information, view our commenting policy. Responses are limited to 500 words for online and 250 words for print consideration.

Related News

Newsletters.
Get More From PAW In Your Inbox.

Learn More

Title complimentary graphics