Vie Francaise - Softcover

"A marvelously tragicomic novel, full of elation and melancholy." --Elle (France)"Sharp. . . . At its best, Vie hauls us out of a cliché - France is different - to a more complex appreciation of the difference." --The New York Times"Desire, love, identity crises, the anguish of aging, lost illusions. . . . Like John Updike, Dubois is entranced by the richness of the world and shows it to us just as it is." --Le Figaro Litteraire"Funny, poignant, divinely written. A marvelous novel." --Marie France

Meet Paul Blick: born in France (but not Paris); son of a car dealer; provincial sociology student-cum-theoretical revolutionary; briefly employed (by his father-in-law); married and soon to discover adultery and other satisfactions of a desperate househusband as consort of a high-flying wife who conquers the world as CEO of a Jacuzzi-manufacturing company.

This not-so-extraordinary Frenchman is delivered to the not-so-extraordinary awareness of having arrived in middle age more a product of his times, his country, and blind chance than a creature of his own free will. Jean-Paul Dubois gives us a man whose life reflects the story – the mind and the heart – of a society coming belatedly, poignantly, and often hilariously to grips with the abiding pain and intermittent beauty of what living has become.