Diane Johnson Books In Order

Burning

Bel Air is a wealthy community nestled in the hills outside of Los Angeles. It is here, among the pastel stucco houses and palm trees, that Bingo Edwards, the New Age wife of an orthopedic surgeon, lives a sheltered and eccentric life raising chickens and box turtles. Her harmonious existence is disrupted when the local fire department arrives to remove the hazardous backyard privacy hedges which have protected her from the outside world. Uprooting the hedges exposes Bingo all too well to her neighbors, an unconventional Beverly Hills psychiatrist and his eccentric patients. She also finds herself in the company of strangers, particularly a magnificently handsome fireman who has made it his personal crusade to ‘service’ many of the housewives on Bellagio Road. As the situation heats up for everyone, an enormous fire threatens to consume Bel Air and in the process, destroy Bingo’s way of life. Burning is part of a major Diane Johnson reissue program in Plume. Diane Johnson’s Le Divorce was a phenomenal success, topping national bestseller lists. The thousands of new Diane Johnson fans gained with Le Divorce will eagerly receive this book.

The Shadow Knows

The anonymous hero*ine, N, is a young woman who has broken free of a constricting marriage and is struggling to raise four children alone in a housing project. Coming home one day N finds her door hacked with an ax and smeared with what appears to be a mixture of blood and crankcase oil. A few days later a strangled cat is left outside her apartment door. Everyday, she is plagued by mysterious, disturbing phone calls. Playing detective and attempting to figure out who her enemy may be, N’s real fears merge with paranoid fantasy in this fascinating story which rivals the best of Henry James’s dark, psychological gothic tales. Johnson’s most recent novel, Le Divorce, was a phenomenal success. Long out of print, this classic Diane Johnson novel is now available for all the readers of Le Divorce left hungry for more. The Shadow Knows received outstanding reviews.

Lying Low

A National Book Award finalist, this novel relates the events of four crucial days in the lives of four people sharing a rambling Victorian house, ‘Lying Low‘ and harboring secrets not meant to be shared. Theo Wait, a middle aged former ballet dancer, and her brother, Anton, have taken in two boarders: beautiful Lynn, who never receives mail or visitors; and energetic and effusive Ouida, a Brazilian student and illegal alien who won’t let complicated bureaucratic wrangles and constant fear of deportation taint her vision of America as the land of opportunity. A faked identity, a search for one of the FBI’s most wanted escaped prison convicts, and a Brazilian feast that spins out of control kick the plot into high gear. While each of these characters has been plagued by a sense of impending disaster, the terrible thing they’ve all been fearing comes from an entirely unexpected direction, shattering all of their lives. Johnson’s most recent novel, Le Divorce, was a phenomenal success. The thousands of new fans Johnson made with Le Divorce will be eager to read other books by this witty and delectable writer. Lying Low was nominated for a National Book Award.

Persian Nights

From the author of ‘Le Divorce’ comes another alluring, fast paced novel of an American woman abroad. While visiting Iran with her husband, Chloe Fowler is left to travel alone when he is summoned home unexpectedly. Initially drawn to the life she encounters in Iran, Chloe soon experiences frightening events that exposes the darker side of this ‘colonial life’ .

Health and Happiness

This ‘brilliant, engaging, cleverly manipulated piece of fiction’ ‘San Francisco Chronicle’, written by the author of ‘Le Divorce’, captures the moral dilemmas and life and death decisions that are the foundation of hospital life, portraying the continuous clashes of motive and sensibility that create the ongoing comedy of medical manners.

Le Divorce

In Le Divorce, Diane Johnson delightfully recounts the adventures of two sisters from California who make a modern pilgrimage to the City of Light. Pregnant and abandoned by her French husband, Roxeanne Walker de Persand turns to her younger sister, Isabel, for support, while the powerful Persand family exerts subtle but firm control over her decision whether or not to divorce. Complicating matters is the disposition of a family heirloom, a painting in Roxy’s possession that is suddenly discovered to be worth millions. In the midst of a variety of schemes, the stakes are suddenly raised by a crime of passion, disrupting everyone’s motives and plans. Not since Edith Wharton penned her brilliant portraits of Americans abroad has an American novelist so perfectly captured the possibilities and perils of succumbing to the allure of Paris. Le Divorce was a hardcover bestseller appearing on the Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, and Newsday bestseller lists. Le Divorce received outstanding reviews. The hardcover is in its 8th printing with over 50,000 copies in print. Plume is embarking on a major Diane Johnson backlist reissue program with one out of print title to appear each month between February and June 1994.

Le Mariage

A sparkling new novel a comedy of manners from the author of Le Divorce, an acclaimed national bestseller and 1997 National Book Award finalistMany have compared Diane Johnson to such great literary figures as Jane Austen, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and F. Scott Fitzgerald all expatriate writers who in one way or another contributed to the development of the ‘international novel.’ Johnson puts a contemporary twist on this venerable form with her keen eye portraits of modern day Americans living abroad. In Le Mariage, as in Le Divorce, she masterly portrays Paris both its outward splendor and its secret inner workings. Le Mariage introduces a proper young French woman engaged to a struggling American journalist hot on the trail of a breaking story: the theft of a valuable illuminated manuscript from a collection in New York, which rumor has it may have found its surreptitious way into the hands of a reclusive film director living on the outskirts of Paris. The director’s wife, an American beauty and former actress, enters a Kafkaesque nightmare as she finds herself wrongly accused of desecrating a national monument. Johnson’s clever plot and delightful characters are to be savored, but Le Mariage also offers brilliant insights into relationships between men and women; marriage and morality as it is perceived on both sides of the Atlantic; and the chaos that ensues when well off, well meaning people attempt to give something back to an imperfect world that has been so unaccountably good to them. Le Mariage is Diane Johnson at her very best.

L’Affaire

Diane Johnson, two time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and three time finalist for the National Book Award, delivers an enchanting and wickedly funny novel about an American abroad and the delicate questions of love, death and money. When Amy Hawkins, a young dot com executive from California who has made her fortune at the top of NASDAQ, overhears a pair of elderly and thus much wiser socialites decry the new generation for their incompetence in all things worldly, she sets off for Europe to find culture, her roots, and maybe a cause to devote her considerable fortune to. Amy starts her quest at one of the finest small hotels in the French Alps a hotel noted for skiing and its famous cooking lessons in the town of Valmeri. A few days into her trip, Amy is nearly swept away by an avalanche started, some say, by low American warplanes. Two of the hotel’s guests, esteemed English publisher Adrian Venn and his much younger American wife, Kerry, were not as fortunate as Amy. Both lie comatose in a nearby hospital. Learning that French and English law dictate a very different division of money depending on where Adrian dies, Adrian’s children young, old, legitimate, and illegitimate assemble in Valmeri to protect their interests should he not pull through. Amy, already suspect as an American, finds that her nationality freezes the social climate as she steps in to assist the family. In her innocence, Amy sets in motion a series of events in France and England that spotlight ancient national differences, customs, and laws. Add one or two small affairs that may topple carefully balanced alliances, and soon it is as the French say, a situation. Hailed as witty, delicious, nuanced and fresh by book critics across the country, Diane Johnson has composed her most amusing and insightful character to date in young Amy Hawkins. A contemporary masterpiece sure to entertain, L’Affaie is a perfectly drawn comedy of manners abroad.

Lulu in Marrakesh

The two time Pulitzer Prize and three time National Book Award nominated author of the bestseller Le Divorce returns with a mesmerizing novel of double standards and double agents. Lulu Sawyer, the hero*ine of Diane Johnson’s captivating new novel, arrives in Marrakech, Morocco, hoping to rekindle her romance with a worldly Englishman, Ian Drumm. It s the perfect cover for her assignment with the American CIA: tracing the flow of money from well heeled donors to radical Islamic groups. While spending her days poolside among Europeans, in villas staffed by local maids in abayas, and her nights at lively dinner parties, Lulu observes the fragile coexistence of two cultures which, if not yet clashing, have begun to show signs of fracture. Beneath the surface of this polite expatriate community lies a more sinister world laced not only with double standards, but with double agents. As she navigates the complex interface of Islam and the West, Lulu stumbles into unforeseen intrigues: A young Muslim girl, Suma, is hiding from a brother intent on an honor killing; and a beautiful Saudi woman, Gazi, who is vying for Ian s love, leaves her husband in a desperate bid to escape her repressive society. The more Lulu immerses herself in the workings of Marrakech, the more questions emerge; and when bombs explode, the danger is palpable. Lulu s mission ultimately has tragic consequences, but along the way readers will fall in love with this endearing young woman as she improvises her way through the souk, her love life, and her profession. As in her previous novels, Diane Johnson weaves a dazzling tale in the great tradition of works about naive Americans abroad and the laws of unintended consequence, with a new, fascinating assortment of characters, as well as witty, trenchant observations on the manners and morals of a complicated moment in history.

Natural Opium

The two time Pulitzer Prize and three time National Book Award nominated author of the bestseller Le Divorce returns with a mesmerizing novel of double standards and double agents. Lulu Sawyer, the hero*ine of Diane Johnson’s captivating new novel, arrives in Marrakech, Morocco, hoping to rekindle her romance with a worldly Englishman, Ian Drumm. It s the perfect cover for her assignment with the American CIA: tracing the flow of money from well heeled donors to radical Islamic groups. While spending her days poolside among Europeans, in villas staffed by local maids in abayas, and her nights at lively dinner parties, Lulu observes the fragile coexistence of two cultures which, if not yet clashing, have begun to show signs of fracture. Beneath the surface of this polite expatriate community lies a more sinister world laced not only with double standards, but with double agents. As she navigates the complex interface of Islam and the West, Lulu stumbles into unforeseen intrigues: A young Muslim girl, Suma, is hiding from a brother intent on an honor killing; and a beautiful Saudi woman, Gazi, who is vying for Ian s love, leaves her husband in a desperate bid to escape her repressive society. The more Lulu immerses herself in the workings of Marrakech, the more questions emerge; and when bombs explode, the danger is palpable. Lulu s mission ultimately has tragic consequences, but along the way readers will fall in love with this endearing young woman as she improvises her way through the souk, her love life, and her profession. As in her previous novels, Diane Johnson weaves a dazzling tale in the great tradition of works about naive Americans abroad and the laws of unintended consequence, with a new, fascinating assortment of characters, as well as witty, trenchant observations on the manners and morals of a complicated moment in history.

Philip Trager: Changing Paris

Essays by Pierre Borhan, Diane Johnson, and Thomas Mellins.

Documenting the remarkable structures and spaces of Paris, photographer Philip Trager traveled along the river Seine, eloquently juxtaposing the ancient and modern, austere and ornate, and ethereal and urbane. Among the structures and sites that Philip Trager photographs are the ‘Grand Projets,’ the new Bibliothque Nationale, Opra Bastille, Grande Arche de la Dfense, and I.M. Pei’s monumental glass pyramid additions to the Louvre, as well as the Place de la Concorde, Muse d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Eiffel Tower, Muse d’Orsay, and the beautiful gardens and magnificent bridges of the city. Changing Paris displays Trager’s profound mastery of light and unique, contemporary vision, and is a vital record of the continued transformation of Paris in the 90s. Included are insightful essays by Pierre Borhan and Diane Johnson and informative commentary by Thomas Mellins on the architectural history and significance of ‘the City of Light.’

‘These views of Paris can truly be called haunting. It is the true, sad, glorious magic of Paris along the river, in which the Louvre and Notre Dame and even the new national library all pass from matter into light’ , Vincent Scully

American Symbolist Art

This work describes the concepts of Symbolist art used for this study and presents a sequence of the works and writings of five artists Washington Allston at the beginning of the century, John La Farge and William Rimmer at mid century, and George Inness and Albert Pinkham Ryder at the end. These five were selected after a lengthy survey of 19th and early 20th century American art. Although a broader selection might have been made, these particular artists successfully developed, at one point or another in their careers and with more or less clearly defined objectives, highly articulate visual art in the Symbolist mode, as well as writings about their Symbolist intentions without using the term itself. In many instances, their words, as well as their art, recall those of artists like Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, although predating the Europeans by several decades. The Symbolist works of these five Americans are analyzed along side their writings about art, as well as writings by the few major critics who understood their aesthetic intentions at the time, such as James Jackson Jarves, Charles de Kay, and Roger Fry. Not a survey, but rather a highly selective and suggestive study, this book was written with the intent of refining the historical concept of Symbolist Art in general, by extending the view further into American art.