And Paris opens her arms wide for Calcutta�s answer to Madame Bovary. She suddenly evolves into a new, improvised version of the Grande dame, dark of skin and dripping with attitude. What follows is Nilanjana�s conducted tour of Paris in terms of the Western Experience. Nilanjana's moving in with a lesbian feminist helps her grow spiritually and emotionally. Her mother�s illness forces Nilanjana to cut short her Paris experience and return to Calcutta. In Calcutta, she meets another person (beside Kishanlal), whom she loves to hate, and that is her chauvinistic father. Even her mother's sickness cannot bridge the already wide gap. Nilanjana confronts her father with his sorry handiwork, his wife. But the man who is a �Bengali Bhadralok� thinks his daughter is out of her mind. 

After her mother�s death, Nilanjana returns to Paris and looks desperately for a way out of the boredom and depression that threaten to engulf her life. It is at this point that she meets Benoir Dupont, a blue-eyed blond handsome Frenchman, and is swept off her feet. Benoir introduces Nilanjana to the streets, the cafes and the art galleries of Paris. In her passionate, sexually liberating relationship with Benoir, she finally begins to have an inkling of her own desires. The relationship ends when Nilanjana realises that Benoir�s first priority is himself and not the woman he loves, and that her need for him has ended. But here her road to self-discovery begins ... 

Compared to the rhetorical, documentary-like Lajja, French Lover is an evolved creation. Very empathetically translated too, from Bengali. However, the author is unable to focus on the universe of her characters as anything but a battle place of the genders. And this she does in a conventional fashion, but with little insight. Nasrin�s world vision is so limited; her heroine is constantly mistaking politics for poetry. In spite of these failings, French Lover is bold in concept and powerful in execution, The novel is definitely a fascinating glimpse into the workings of a woman�s mind as she struggles to come to terms with her identity in a hostile world.
   

Review : Nilanjana Kar
Design :  Suparna Sengupta