America and France have always had a special relationship. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the two have enjoyed a love affair of sorts, with all the love/hate dynamics that suggests. From Benjamin Franklin charming Louis XVI to Jackie Kennedy enchanting Charles de Gaulle, the two peoples have fascinated and repelled each other. Mary Blume has cultivated her own love affair with this often inscrutable land -- France.

It is an affair that spans more than thirty years, from the time Mary Blume first came to Paris, beginning her renowned columns in the "International Herald Tribune" with a fine eye for the charms, and no aversion to skewering the pretensions, of her adopted home. As with the best chronicles of a time and a place, the narrator begins to emerge through the text. Only Mary Blume could have written these essays. Hers is a unique voice that has won her a devoted audience who have turned religiously, over decades, to her weekend features.

Quintessentially American, she has managed that fine trick of not assimilating, and yet coming to know, in the fullest sense, the place and the people in all thei