Book Review: The Art of French Kissing (2008)

Ah, where do I begin? Hmmmm.

How about this: I stopped reading most chick-lit novels a few years ago, right around the time Helen Fielding’s sequel to the brilliant and groundbreaking Bridget Jones’ Diary hit bookstores. It’s not that Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was bad. It was just that it was…horrible. I’d like to believe that Renee Zellwegger knew that when she signed the contract to star in the film version of TEOR and that she only did it because of the $20 million payday ($1 million per pound of extra weight, is the rumor I heard), not because she thought it was worth making. Otherwise, I’ll lose all respect for her.

Anyway, that’s a rather reluctant caveat to my book review, so that you know that I’m not a big fan of much of current chick-lit. Again, Bridget Jones remains the gold standard, and I love love love all of Marian Keyes‘ novels bar none (especially Watermelon). Jane Green’s Jemima J is worth buying and devouring in one sitting, preferably with the requisite box of chocolates, glass of wine and a nice, long, comfy couch with lots of pillows. Oh, and of course, Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes, Good in Bed, Goodnight Nobody, among others) is fantastic.

The vast majority of pastel-covered books that populate the enormous chick-lit universe, however, leave so much to be desired. One-dimensional characters (some of them don’t even have that one dimension), cliches galore, cringe-worthy dialogue, sloppy writing…need I say more? It’s not the genre, of course. As I noted above, plenty of potential classics abound. It’s just that the rest have really done a lot to spoil the party for everyone else.

(Oh, and let’s not forget Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back. They’re the kind of books you could read over and over and over and over, and in between you can cautiously loan them out to your most trustworthy friends. The film versions weren’t bad, but they couldn’t hold a candle to McMillan’s breathless, snappy prose.)

Okay, so we’ve settled that I remain wary of any “chick-lit” that lands on my lap. I had semi-high hopes for The Art of French Kissing by Kristin Harmel, though. First of all, the author is — according to her author bio — a reporter for People magazine and a regular contributor to Glamour. She’s also a book reviewer for The Daily Buzz, that rather annoying morning show, where she’s the resident “Lit Chick.” Plus, she’s written two other novels, How to Sleep with a Movie Star and The Blonde Theory. Now, I’ve read neither of them, but you don’t get published over and over if you’re not a decent writer, and you’re certainly not going to be getting assignments from People or Glamour anytime soon if your writing talent is anywhere south of great. Shakespeare, they’re not, but they pay well and are highly competitive for a reason.

Oh, and of course, the novel is largely set in Paris. That alone should be enough to recommend it, right?

Sadly…no.

The story is fairly standard: Emma Sullivan is dumped unceremoniously and callously by her fiance, Brett, who then proceeds to pour lots of salt into the wound by — wait for it — sleeping with Emma’s best friend and bridesmaid. The very next day, our poor Emma is unceremoniously and callously dumped by her employer, Boy Bandz Records, where she is a rising PR coordinator. When she tries to elicit compassion and solace from her remaining friends and family, all she gets are cold-hearted admonishments about her inability to forgive, her neediness, lack of a mate, and “high-maintenance” attitude.

These pages describing the fallout from Emma and Brett’s breakup had my teeth on edge. Where did this girl get these people? Cold and downright mean in their reactions to the dissolution of the engagement, I had to wonder what Emma ever saw in her friends, much less the cocky Brett. It smacked of a badly executed plot device, thrown in just to emphasize the hopelessness of Emma’s situation and contrast it with the unbelievable turn of luck just hovering around the corner.

Enter, of course, the inimitable Poppy Miller, an old roommate from England who now runs her own PR firm (bien sur!) in Paris and who conveniently needs a new assistant. Fair enough. Sure, I’ll suspend my disbelief at this remarkable turn of events, if only so that we can do away with the miserable hole Emma’s suddenly found herself in and send her off to Paris.

Poppy, it turns out, needs a new assistant because her biggest, most deal-making client is Guillaume Riche, the heir apparent to all the big rock stars in the history of music. We’re talking big. He’s beyond gorgeous, writes his own music, speaks fluent French and English, and is about to release his first bilingual album that will launch him into the stratosphere of pop music history. He’s the Beatles, Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones, and Brad Pitt, all rolled into one yummy, shirtless package.

Oh, and he’s also certifiably in-freakin‘-sane.

Seriously. I don’t think I’m ruining anyone’s fun here by referring to a scene where Guillaume finds himself dangling from a rope strung between two buildings…thirteen stories above Paris’ famed cobblestone streets. He’s that kind of rock star, the kind Momma warned you away from. Hell, he’s the kind that would scare Britney Spears away.

But for some reason, he captures Emma’s imagination enough to convince her that, yes, he should be made King of the Pop World. Maybe even King of her Own Heart.

Naturally, this wouldn’t be a romance/chick-lit novel without a rival. To fill in that critical role, Harmel introduces us to Gabriel Francoeur, a reporter for the chick-lit equivalent of the Associated Press. “Gabe,” as Emma likes to call him (and I hate this nickname as it reminds me of Welcome Back, Kotter. Gabe Kaplan’s funny, but you don’t want him in mind when you think, romantic leading man), is suspicious of Emma’s rather awkward (and unbelievable) attempts to cover up Guillaume’s increasingly dangerous and humiliating stunts and taunts her repeatedly for “the truth about Guillaume’s behavior.”

Now, I realize that at the heart of every good, satisfying love story lies a thicket of sexual tension before the final denouement. Without it, you’re looking at one big yawner. To pull it off, however, means giving the reader a reason to believe that these two otherwise intelligent, kind, friendly people would find anything to really dislike about each other. (If they weren’t intelligent, kind and friendly, we wouldn’t really be interested in them as romantic leads, non?) The problem with many romance novels, however, is that too often, the conflict seems so forced, so artificial, that it reads more like the half-hearted attempt of a lazy, unoriginal writer to inject tension where otherwise reasonable people wouldn’t find any.

And that’s where The Art of French Kissing drops the ball and smacks face-first into the dirt that is the slush pile. At least, in my world.

Gabe and Emma fight, glare at each other, punish each other by hurling Tom Swifties left and right, and generally behave like to high school students making fun of each other’s cooties. There’s no real reason for them to fight other than to advance their limp romance; otherwise, they would’ve mashed faces together well before the halfway mark, ethical considerations be damned.

About halfway through the book, I realized that, Geez, I couldn’t really give a rat’s ass about any of these characters: not Emma, who seems far too immature and incompetent to hold such a prestigious position as a PR executive (after two weeks working as a publicist in Paris for a world-famous French musician, she doesn’t know how to say publicist in French?); not Guillaume, who is a train waiting for its delayed derailment; not Poppy, who’s supposed to be British, I guess, but comes across (even in print, which you know is a bad sign) as an American pretending to be British by mouthing off all the usual British-isms like “rubbish” “Fancy a croissant?”, and “tosser;” and not Gabe, who lives up to the role of the “enigmatic” leading man but who sadly doesn’t appear to have anything else to do with his life other than to get into fights with Emma; and definitely not Brett, who is so predictable, I don’t think I have to worry too much about spoiling the reader’s good fun by warning that the reader has not seen the last of him when Emma jets off to Paris to nurse her broken heart.

Characters blink back tears that “prickle the backs of his/her/their eyes” (a phrase repeated many, many, many times throughout the book). They say things like, “Perhaps things are different in America, but here the women are women and the men are men,” “Maybe if you stay long enough in a city that’s so perfect, you’ll find perfection in your own life, too,” and “I sat down on the couch, beside another potted plant, feeling a bit surprised at how comfortable the cushions were.” Oh, and Emma grits her teeth a lot, while Gabe always seems to be driving off “without looking back.” Seriously. At least three times, by my last count.

That sound you hear would be that of my eyes rolling to the back of my head.

By the time the reader finally, mercifully reaches the point where the mystery behind the relationship between Guillaume and Gabe is revealed, one is so exhausted from dodging cliches, clunky sentences and implausible scenarios that the “secret” is anything but surprising. If anything, it’s the worst deux ex machina I’ve ever read in any chick-lit novel, a completely absurd “twist” that defies any semblance to real-world logic and which places Gabe’s professional position in a rather dim ethical light.

I wish I could say that this would be a good book to toss into the beach bag before heading out for a lazy day under the sun, but it’s not worth wasting the 3-4 agonizing hours over this. Paris never looked more cliche-y, serving as a very dull backdrop to an even duller romance. Stay away from this one and check out any of the aforementioned classic “chick-lit” books instead. (Start with any of Marian Keyes’ novels. The woman is — and I know I use this word a lot, but it really applies here! I swear! — brilliant.) One of these days, I’ll come across a charming, well-written, delightful chick-lit novel set in Paris, with real characters, thoughtful dialogue and fascinating stories. Unfortunately, The Art of French Kissing isn’t it.

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