A French Reading List: Books set in France

Bonjour Tristesse is a charming, witty and thoroughly dark tale all wrapped up in a slender 112-page novella. The story follows Cécile, part-sophisticated beyond her years, part-precocious teenager, who is driven by jealousy, stubbornness and ennui to interfere in her father’s love affairs, leading to devastating consequences. All set against the backdrop of the French Riviera, descriptions of golden-skinned Cécile and her father Raymond’s hedonistic lifestyle, full of fast cars, languid heat and carefree soirées, oozes with nostalgia for a 1950s France that perhaps only ever truly existed in our collective imaginations.

If you’re looking for a good story set during the Second World War, this is the book for you. All The Light We Cannot See follows the lives of two children, and as the story switches between France and Germany, we gain an insight into what it was like to grow up in these countries in the run up to the war. Marie-Laure lives in Paris with her beloved father, a locksmith at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. Marie-Laure starts to go blind when she is only six years old, so her devoted father builds her a small-scale model of the city so she can memorise its streets and find her way around by touch and memory as she grows up. Walter is an orphan living with his sister in Hitler’s Germany. He has a talent for mending radios that earns him a place at an elite boarding school preparing boys for entry into the Wehrmacht, which changes his future for ever. Throughout the book the lives of these two children draw closer and closer, and you cannot help but wonder if and when their paths will cross.

Emma Bovary is definitely a bit of a Marmite character – you’ll either pity her circumstances or just find her supremely detestable! Bored and disenchanted with the banality of ordinary life, the beautiful Emma feels trapped in her marriage to an ordinary provincial doctor and finds solace in the romantic novels popular at the time, which she devours voraciously. Eventually, the fantasies from her reading spill over into real life, leading her to have a string off affairs, hoping to find love and excitement, but ultimately these too prove to bring nothing but disappointment, leading to devastating consequences.

Julien Sorel‘s good looks make him irresistible to women, and he hopes to use this to his advantage in his ambitions to rise to the top of French society, despite his humble background. Ultimately resorting to deceit and adultery, Julien’s scheming eventually leads to his own tragic downfall. In a satire of high society that still feels relevant today, Stendhal masterfully weaves a story that also serves to address various social issues including politics, social class, religion, French provincial life, and above all the role of women in society. However it is his focus on the inner mind and psychology of his main characters that has lead Stendhal to be considered the father of the psychological novel.

Les Mis is probably the first story I think about when someone mentions French literature. An absolute must-read for anyone wanting to gain a deeper understanding French society, however admittedly it’s more one to dip in and out of as it’s a pretty lengthy novel (definitely opt for the abridged version – at the time of publication writers were paid by the word so there’s quite a lot of padding in the original!).

The plot follows Jean Valjean, after he is released from prison after 19 years (he was originally arrested for stealing bread). He manages to reinvent himself as a successful businessman, but Javert, a prison officer, relentless pursues him for breaking parole. Not only is it a keen depiction of the contradictions and cruelty of the 19th century French judicial system, this novel also manages to pack in a good deal of romance and drama, as well as giving us a look deep into the Parisian underworld. It’s no wonder that Les Misérables is known as one of the greatest novels of all time.

The Nightingale is the story of two sisters and their struggle to survive in Nazi-occupied France. Vianne, living in the quiet village of Carriveau, must endure a Nazi officer living in her home, and she is forced to make terrible choices as the enemy watches her every move. Isabelle falls in love with a partisan named Gäetan, but, when he ultimately betrays her, she joins the Resistance, channeling her rage into helping others in the face of the horrors of war. There may be an abundance of novels set during this period of France’s history, but what makes The Nightingale stand out is its focus on the ‘womens war’, which is all-too-often glossed over and forgotten.

A decadent tale of two aristocratic ex-lovers who plot to seduce innocent and naive targets for their own amusement. Their cruel and manipulative game ultimately has far more serious consequences than either could ever have anticipated. A cutting portrayal of French high society made all the more poignant by the fact that it was published only a few years before the French Revolution. Sound strangely familiar? That’s because the 1999 film Cruel Intentions is actually a modernised version of this very novel.

A remarkable exploration of how the trauma of the First World War shaped the psyches of those who survived it, Birdsong is a must-read for anyone wishing to better understand the aftershocks felt throughout the rest of the 20th century. Spanning three generations, the plot mainly focuses on Stephen Wraysford (first when visiting Amiens in France, where he falls in love with his host’s wife, and later as a soldier fighting in the trenches of the Western Front) and Elizabeth his granddaughter, piecing together Stephen’s history while living in London in the 1970s.

Somehow managing to be both literary and accessible, The Elegance of the Hedgehog switches between Renée Michel, the 54-year-old concierge of a block of luxury apartments in Paris, and Paloma Josse, a 12-year-old girl belonging to the building’s most bourgeois family. Paloma has decided that life is meaningless and plans to end it all on her 13th birthday. Essentially a beginners’ course in philosophy applied to everyday life, it makes a fun read.

Another absolute hit written by a teenager (this one published when the author, Faïza Guène, was nineteen years old), Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow centers around Doria, a 15-year-old Muslim girl who lives in a housing project just outside Paris. The title is a play on the Arabic kif kif meaning ‘same old, same old’ and the French kiffer, meaning to really like something. Part political commentary, part day-in-the-life-of-a-teenager, the novel combines tragedy with humour as Doria observes the lives of her neighbours living in the projects all the while trying to make sense of life as a teenage girl in France’s capital city.

If you’ve always dreamed of moving to France and want to live vicariously through someone who actually upped sticks with his whole family plus dogs and decamped to a stone farmhouse in rural Provence, then this is the book for you. A Year in Provence is a witty and incredibly funny account of a man’s first year living in the south of France, after spending years dreaming of a French lifestyle. Hilarious, refreshingly honest and warm-hearted – this one will put a smile on your face.

La Bête Humaine, or “The Beast Within” is a grisly tale of Étienne Lantier, a “human beast” who has a hereditary madness leading him to feel aroused at the prospect of murdering women. Apparently inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders, La Bête Humaine is a keen study of the criminal mind. The tense, dark psychological nature of the novel make it feel incredibly modern, despite being written in the nineteenth century – this is a perfect one if you like dark creepy stories.

Of all the books set in France, this one perhaps has the most amazing backstory. The manuscript for Suite Française was discovered 62 years after the author’s tragic death, and it’s strange to think that it may have been lost forever. Written in 1941 as a response to the horrors Iréne Némirovsky was living through in the midst of Nazi-occupied France, the novel is highly regarded as one of the best portrayals of ordinary people during one of the most troubling hours of France’s history. It is the author’s character description, empathy and compassion that make this book a masterpiece.

A heartwarming tale of a young single mother, Vianne, who moves to a small French village to open a chocolaterie, much to the delight of many but to the utmost horror of the local priest, who preaches self-denial and is horrified that a chocolate shop should open during lent! As Vianne breathes change into the community, welcoming outcasts and helping a woman leave her abusive husband, the priest sees this as a threat to his authority. A battle of old versus new, change against tradition, but overall a celebration of kindness, courage and, of course, chocolate.

Also known as “French children don’t throw food”, Bringing Up Bébé is a hilarious examination of the differences between French and American parenting styles. It all started when journalist Pamela Druckerman was in Paris, and noticed that French children are so much better behaved than their American counterparts. The French children she met sat at the table and ate grown-up food, slept through the night and managed to entertain themselves while their parents focused on other things. Armed with a notepad, Pamela spent three years noting down all the differences she observed and tips and tricks learned from French parents, which makes for a very entertaining read whether you have children or not.

Of all the books set in France, this is perhaps one of the most gruesome. Set in the filthy the slums of eighteenth-century Paris, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer centres on Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who, abandoned on the streets as a baby, grows up to discover that he has a remarkable gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human’s. Unsatisfied with his job as a perfume maker, mixing herbs and oils to create products for the well-to-do citizens of Paris, Grenouille becomes fixated on bottling the scent of a beautiful young virgin – ultimately driving him to murder.

From the author of the bestselling Girl with a Pearl Earring comes another incredible story behind a famous piece of art. The Lady and the Unicorn is inspired by a series of tapestries designed in Paris in the late 1400s / early 1500s, sometimes referred to as the ‘Mona Lisa of the Middle Ages’, and considered some of the greatest surviving masterpieces of medieval European art. The mysterious meaning of these artworks forms the basis of Tracy Chevalier’s novel, in which a social climbing French nobleman commissions a series of tapestries from the talented but arrogant Nicolas des Innocents, who goes on to wreak havoc in the nobleman’s household. Weaving fact and fiction into an extraordinary story, the plot is entertaining, juicy and will keep you hooked to the very end.