Books: 'What French Women Know'

WHAT FRENCH WOMEN KNOW

By Debra Ollivier (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $24.95, 244 pages)

Ah, those French women. A spate of recent books has urged American women to look to them for advice on all kinds of things, from diet to dating, as if we didn't get enough advice, both wise and absurd, right here in know-it-all America. Now writer Debra Ollivier, who has homes in Los Angeles and Paris, serves up French women's wisdom on "love, sex and other matters of the heart and mind," as the subtitle trumpets. What do French women know? According to Ollivier, they know that it's futile to worry about what other people -- especially men -- allegedly think. They know how to enjoy life, at ease in their own skins; how to avoid obsession with their spouses, children or anything at all, how to turn imperfection and ambiguity into enigmatic individuality. There are a few bonbons of wisdom in this book and some astute observations about the deep differences between American and French culture, but something about the very act of choosing this book goes against its themes -- to be yourself to the core, and to imitate no one, not even French women.

PAMELA MILLER, NIGHT METRO EDITOR

In the Heart of the Canyon

By Elisabeth Hyde (Knopf, $25.95, 336 pages)

Anyone who's ever been on a group tour will be instantly drawn into Hyde's latest novel. Trip leader JT Maroney is hoping that his 125th ride down the Colorado River will go smoothly. This tour, however, proves more challenging than he expects. First, there's Susan, who hopes to connect with her morbidly obese 17-year-old daughter, Amy. Then there are Lloyd and Ruth, who, in their 70s, are facing their last run down the river. A know-it-all historian and his mousy wife, two preteen siblings and their squabbling parents, an immature 27-year-old and an aloof Harvard professor round out the group. And to make it really interesting, JT stumbles upon a scruffy lost dog the first day of the trip. Hyde writes knowingly of the West's stunning scenery and expertly captures the forced intimacies that, like the river, sometimes entice with unexpected grace and at other times boil into recrimination. Toward the end, JT realizes the power of such concentrated, intense experiences: "[He] suddenly had the feeling that in taking people down the river he broke something in them, something that perhaps needed breaking but needed reconstruction as well; and while he was good at the breaking part ... he gave them nothing with which to reconstruct themselves after the journey." Hyde proves a sure hand at finding the route to restoration.

KATHE CONNAIR, FEATURES COPY EDITOR