French Girl with Mother
A Novel

The main protagonist came across as really immature. The problem is, this quality seems to have seeped into the book and permeated it altogether. I get the young artist's struggle for fire to put into his works. Then again, the guy was 11 years the senior of a 19-year-old gal, which gives us 30. Thi......more

Nathan is a struggling artist who is able to paint a technically perfect reproduction of other artists’ work but he’s been unable to find the emotional element needed to create masterpieces of his own. Then he meets a young uninhibited French girl, Anais, who may be just the muse that he needs. He f......more

Juvenile main character, absurd supporting cast, cliches littering the book, and a tenuous (at best) plot seemingly used to paste faux-erotic wish-fulfillment sex scenes together.......more

Early in Norman Ollestad's eagerly awaited first novel Nathan, the narrator/protagonist, is told he's had "Too much college, not enough life." Meaning that even though he's a talented artist who exhibits vast reservoirs of technique in his work, that work lacks the spark that would make it great. Na......more

Before writing this review, I went to Amazon to see what others had said, and because French Girl with Mother is so hot off the press, there were very few, most of which gave the novel five stars. So I read the one by the reader that gave it four stars, who was sent the book for free in exchange for......more