Isabel Walker, a University of Southern California dropout and the self-ad-mitted product of a happy home, is the central character. She arrives in France already pre-labeled by her family and friends. She is "the pretty one," and the unsettled youngest daughter who cannot make up her mind what she wants to be when she grows up. But she also has a reputation for being practical and analytical, in contrast to her sister's artistic dreaminess.

Isabel herself believes the labels to be fair, and they do accurately describe her, although not completely. Isabel is also intelligent, which she claims she gets little credit for because Roxy "won" that designation first, and she is adaptive and curious.

These traits eventually serve her well, but during her first weeks in Paris they do not seem to help much. Her spoken French does not go much beyond "Bonjour," and she confronts her...