Mark Greenside
Teoksen I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany tekijä
Tietoja tekijästä
Mark Greenside has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protester, Vista volunteer, union leader, and college professor. The author of the short story collection I Saw a Man Hit His Wife, he divides his time between Alameda, California, and Brittany, France, where, he says, he still can't do näytä lisää anything without asking for help. näytä vähemmän
Tekijän teokset
I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany (2008) 269 kappaletta, 19 arvostelua
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Syntymäaika
- c1945
- Sukupuoli
- male
- Kansalaisuus
- USA
- Syntymäpaikka
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
An American buys a house in Brittany (it really doesn't matter, it could have been Provence,Dordogne,Auvergne...)and is confronted with the inhabitants and their very local habits. Fair enough,but what I don't get is that the author has spent 2 months every year in Brittany for 25 years and his vocabulary still doesn't reach beyond bonjour and bonsoir. A copy of French for Dummies would be very appropriate. The result is that both the author and the French sound like complete idiots. Not very respectful towards your adoptive country,is it? And there are some grammatical errors (not the author's)for instance : probléme instead of problème. Apparently the editor also needed a copy of French for Dummies ). Still,there are some passages in this book that definitely made me smile,always a good thing...but it has been done before and so much better...
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Obi2015 | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jul 19, 2020 |
Obi2015 | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jul 19, 2020 | It's been about a decade since Greenside purchased his second home in the Brittany area of France. This book, rather that being strictly chronological, hits a lot of the high points over the years as he navigates social niceties, finance, medical care, accidents and the like in his second home. I liked hearing about the people who have become his good friends and how now, after all this time, Madame P can be Yvonne.
A very enjoyable introduction to the people of Brittany by a self-deprecating author which made me think about traveling again.
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Started out as a potentially enchanting book but just tripped over itself. I last studied French in high school so a lot of the French dialogue can only be appreciated by someone who knows French. And then there were parts in the story that just seemed missing.
I could understand why the author would want to skip over the ending of a relationship. How someone just finds himself buying a house in France confused me too. It just felt like a chapter was missing there.