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The Bonjour Effect  By  cover art

The Bonjour Effect

By: Julie Barlow, Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
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Publisher's summary

Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow spent a decade traveling back and forth to Paris as well as living there. Yet one important lesson never seemed to sink in: how to communicate comfortably with the French, even when you speak their language. In The Bonjour Effect, Jean-Benoît and Julie chronicle the lessons they learned after they returned to France to live, for a year, with their twin daughters. They offer up all the lessons they learned and explain, in a book as fizzy as a bottle of the finest French champagne, the most important aspect of all: the French don't communicate; they converse.

To understand and speak French well, one must understand that French conversation runs on a set of rules that go to the heart of French culture. Why do the French like talking about "the decline of France"? Why does broaching a subject like money end all discussion? Why do the French become so aroused debating the merits and qualities of their own language?

Through encounters with school principals, city hall civil servants, gas company employees, old friends, and business acquaintances, Julie and Jean-Benoît explain why, culturally and historically, conversation with the French is not about communicating or being nice. It's about being interesting.

©2016 Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"The authors clearly had a ball researching the book, and their glee is infectious. The writing is as light as it is substantive, and if that sounds like a contradiction, I would refer you to a soufflé." ( The New York Times)

What listeners say about The Bonjour Effect

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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  • CA
  • 01-24-19

Terrible French pronunciation

The book is about French language so why wouldn’t Audible find a reader who is bilingual or at least knows French pronunciation??? It’s very painful listening to her pronunciation of French words—not her fault, of course. Too bad since the information in this book is very interesting and useful!

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8 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

About Half Way Through

Normally, I reserve my criticism of a book until I finish it. Many books start slow, are okay in the middle and then end wonderfully. This book may end wonderfully, but so far, I don't care for it much.

The narrator has a flippant and superior attitude in her voice. The book is written by people who come off as superior to the French and therefore entitled to criticize the French in a demeaning way. Maybe most non French people find this amusing. I do not.

Having been to France several times and considering retiring in France, I have found French people to be little like the people described in this book.

I'll painfully finish listening to it. So far I can't recommend it.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Narration - Such an affected voice

The Narrator has an odd way of flattening out words and leaving them at the back of her throat. Its SO incredibly odd. I really like all the information in this book, but i have to stop and get a different book every few chapters to cleanse my ears before I can go back to it. Such a shame.

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3 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • D.
  • 11-05-20

Worth a Listen for Francophiles

Having an intermediate command of the French language and always having found French culture and history seductive and captivating, this was absolutely my kind of book. It accomplished its purpose by illuminating differences as to how the French do things and perceive the world, with the unique historical and sociological factors at play.

While I understand that Teri Schnaubelt seems to be a big audio-book star, it is beyond comprehension that an author with no command of the French language would have been used for a title like this. Someone else deserved to have performed this. As an example of just how clueless the narrator is, "Le Pen" is pronounced with the nasalized vowel, which indicates a complete and total disconnection between Schnaubelt and anything about French society. She is clearly using a pronunciation guide to help her, but her ineptitude and the lack of editing slip out again with "jacobinisme" pronounced "jay-cohb-in-izmuh"; at times she is using her pronunciation guide, and at times she is winging it.

With a title with such a heavy emphasis on foreign language, it really detracts from the experience and enjoyability wincing and cringing every thirty seconds.

Regarding the content of the book, in spite of its many poignant observations about the French and its utility to any traveler and foreigner, it also grows redundant in the second half and contains a lot of the standard left-wing blather. As an example, in a section on the French Revolution, the leftists are described as supporting individual rights whereas the rightists were all counter-revolutionaries and royalists which is eminently untrue. There were many moderate revolutionaries on the right, and the leftists were the biggest mass murders and lovers of the guillotine under Robespierre, so this portrayal makes perfect since if one considers not life an individual right. Furthermore, the "extreme right" in France is portrayed as this terrible, malodorous societal disease while nothing bad is said of the extreme left.

Enfin, although the first half earns a solid five-out-of-five for content, the second half starts to grow dull. The performance of the narrator is pure cringe and a non-French-speaking person should have never been considered for this position. Also, the book does not get political often but when it does, it is the same pseudo-intellectual babble one would hear in a coffee shop from any struggling liberal arts/psychology major with an Apple laptop. This book is easy to recommend for someone with an interest in French culture but it will not change anyone's life.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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disappointing

The book started out strong, but rapidly became more of a stereotypical caricature of the French people based on interactions with some upperclass Parisians. I was disappointed and couldn't even finish the book

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Biased

The first part of the book is interesting and useful, but the author descends into political discussion and is clearly biased

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1 person found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

good content, annoying performance

bonjour! as an american in paris, i loved the insights into the french psyche. i’d recommend this as a traditional book, but not as an audiobook. i found the narrator’s tone and delivery overly stuffy. and her french pronunciation was frequently off. c’est dommage as there were so many interesting topics discussed.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating and informative

This book was very good overall. My only criticism is that every chapter seemed to end very abruptly. All the content was engaging and well written. Superb!

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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Must read if visit France

This book explains why Americans think French people are rude (because Americans don't understand the norm and culture). If a person walked into your office without knocking and waiting for permission, you would think the person was ill-mannered and probably be curt with that person. That is how the French feel when foreigners don't show simple courtesies like greeting the person ("bonjour"), listening to the response, and having a real conversation (instead of jumping into what you need).

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great book, and hello from Paris

This book is quite good and should be updated as it was published in 2017. Would like to hear further updates as things have changed even further since this book was written.

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