it's hard not to resort to French phrases -- like tour de force -- when describing Diane Johnson's novel, Le Divorce, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

A bestseller when it came out, it later spawned a movie (which I've not seen and would not like to) and a sequel (which I've not read and would like to). But this novel is more than meal enough, and for readers who are also writers it's a master class in how to manage a massive cast, complicated plot, and perhaps the most delicately difficult task of all, French manners, customs and language with élan.

The novel is narrated by the ever-game Isabel, a USC film school dropout who's come to Paris to help her stepsister Roxy, who is pregnant, and, we soon discover, on the doorstep of a divorce. Entanglements, which include a tussle over a valuable painting, ensue.

The book is often described a comedy of manners -- and it does fit that genre -- comedy, check, manners, check -- but surprisingly, there's also a fair amount of blood spilled in the end. (Not blood on the level of say, The Shining, the screenplay of which Johnson co-wrote, but still: blood, and some mild mayhem.)

But there are also a pleasing number of sumptuous meals, passionate trysts, and the occasional advice to the reader on how to navigate French (pronouncing coup de grace correctly, a character quietly explains, requires enunciating the second c: koo de grahss, not koo de grah).

Johnson lives, or lived, part of the year in Paris and wrote a lovely book about that experience as well, which I'll hope to dive into in a future post.