Joie de Vivre

After French Toast and French Fried, Harriet Welty Rochefort completes an informal trilogy about her adopted country’s charms and foibles with Joie de Vivre, turning her attention to “secrets of wining, dining and romancing like the French,” and a lot more. An American married to a Frenchman and resident in Paris for 30 years (and a contributor to France Today), Rochefort also offers keen-eyed riffs on footwear, doggie bags, country homes and philosophers as pop stars, and her diligent research has turned up unusual facts, opinions, pithy quotes and anecdotes. A delightful digression leads from art and aesthetics to a tour of Maison Legeron, a family firm producing handmade silk flowers since 1727. And she backs up her claim that rudeness and irascibility are just French forms of fun with a quote from Ammianus Marcellinus (330–400 AD) citing the “frightful and ferocious eyes” of the Gauls.

Americans rarely ponder why Swedish women don’t get fat, or the lessons of bringing up bambino. Why the fascination with the French? Rochefort offers a raft of good reasons, both lighthearted and serious. Her breezy, exuberant style makes reading Joie de Vivre like a conversation with a friend over a bottle of wine, and its compact chapters mean you can pause, and take up again as if you’d never stopped. And she writes with such verve that her own joie de vivre is never in doubt.

A perfect choice for the Francophiles on your holiday gift list.

Joie de Vivre: Secrets of Wining, Dining and Romancing Like the French. By Harriet Welty Rochefort. St. Martin’s Press, 2012. 304 pages. $24.99