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A Book Review: A Year in the Merde, by Stephen Clarke

By Victor Kramer

Book Review: A Year in the Merde, by Stephen Clarke

By: Victor Kramer
 
This is not a dispassionate review.  No Olympian detachment here. Can’t help it, I’m a Francophile and Stephen Clarke is a Francophobe. Actually it’s more complicated than that, but there is no word that I can think of for someone who adores France but not the folks who live there.
 
Here’s a quote from Clarke: “There are lots of French people who are not at all hypocritical, inefficient, treacherous, intolerant, adulterous, or incredibly sexy … They just didn’t make it into my book.”
 
The book’s title is a fooler. Clarke’s novel has nothing to do with rehabbing farm houses in the Midi. It’s about a Brit who’s been hired by a Parisian firm to launch a chain of “très English” tea shops. His French boss is an attractive, duplicitous weasel. He tries to con our hero, who eventually proves the better con man. There is a lot of monkey business about business and politics and about Paul’s unreasonable rate of success in bedding French women.  
 
The writing is fast and flip, and there are some trenchant aperçus regarding French corporate life.  There are also some lyrical descriptions of Paris and of the village in la France profonde where Paul almost buys a house.
 
I liked the book in spite of myself. There are lots of cheap shots at the French (a few well deserved), but they are delivered with wit and style.
 
The jacket blurb on the review copy says that Clarke works for a French press group and that he once wrote comedy for BBC Radio. It also says the book is already a “bestseller in the UK and France.”  The book is due to be published in the U.S. in May and–again according to the jacket blurb–there will be national advertising, an author tour, and other promotions.
 


A Year in the Merde